Not an Angel

Accompanied an exhibition called Claudia Hart: Dr. Faustie's

In Dr. Faustie, as in her earlier work, she tackles the theme of evil and the ways in which people ingratiate and adapt themselves to power. It synthesizes various sources, among them Faust, Parts I and Il by Goethe; Goethe and His Age by George Lukacs; All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity by Marshall Berman; and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. With irony and humour, Hart interprets Carnegie's course as a dialogue between Mephisto and Faust that plays off the original Goethe text. This project is directly inspired by issues of real estate development, speculation and a pumped-up economy written about allegorically by Goethe in the early 19th century. Hart proposes that this example has its parallels in post-unification Berlin and post­-Expo Vancouver.

Having exhibited widely in Europe and the United States, this is Claudia Hart's first exhibition in Canada.