Words may not do justice to Dominique Teufen’s installation Afgelopen (‘Over’) which was exhibited at Nest in The Hague last April, but reviewers sure have tried.

Davos-born and Amsterdam-based Teufen created a room in which a party seems to have taken place, but with a twist—she removed all colours from the room. The result is disorienting as Trendbeheer noticed:

Your senses are being shut down completely. You’re walking in a subtle scenery of deafening silence. […] It is dull, powerful, a feast.

Volkskrant added (PDF):

I saw the remains of a birthday party. Splashes of wine left in glasses, cigarette butts, stale peanuts, empty beer bottles, suffering potted plants, wilted wreaths; it is the morning after—you know how it goes.

That is what I saw. This is what happened. The blood disappeared from my cheeks. A dark blanket covered my mood. I realised I couldn’t remember a single happy moment from my life. The space was dead, as dead as a doornail. […] This had been a Dementors’ birthday party.

And Metropolism said:

You don’t know what you’re seeing. For a moment you feel like something is wrong with your eyes, maybe somebody has been working with black lights. I thought I was seeing light blue and pale red as my eyes were searching desperately for colour. That’s when a circuit in my brain shorted. It could not deal with the fact that I had stepped into a black and white photo. My nose suddenly detected a filthy chemical smell that wasn’t there.

Teufen likes to work with mixed media, photography and a black & white copier, as you might have guessed. There are no plans for another exhibition of Afgelopen in the immediate future. Teufen will be exhibiting other work at the Uno Art Space in Stuttgart, Germany starting 14 June.

(Photo: Trendbeheer/Jeroen Bosch, some rights reserved)