The animal in us, or the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.

(Florian Waldvogel)

Sarah Bogner's paintings offer a deconstructive perspective on hybrid beings––those that move between human and animal––as well as on one of the longest-standing themes in art history: the fruit still life. Her art is based on the instability of meanings and the challenging of identity boundaries, thus inviting the viewer to question established notions of thinking and perception. In her pictures we encounter beings that are neither clearly animal nor human. Their existence provokes a re-assessment of the traditional metaphysical distinction between the two categories and points to the fragility of the concepts we use to classify the world.

A philosophical reflection about these hybrid beings will inevitably bring us to Martin Heidegger, who in Being and Time postulates a fundamental difference between the human Dasein (being) and all other entities. While humans consciously construct and shape their existence, animals remain in a state of “world-poverty”––a term used by Heidegger to describe their limited relation to the world. This distinction, which attributes a unique position to humans, is questioned in Bogner's work. Her pictures address the classic dichotomy between humans and animals and raise the question of where exactly the demarcation between the two is to be found. By giving horses human features, gestures and facial expressions, she destabilizes the anthropocentric perspective that defines the human being as the rational subject and the animal as the being that is driven by instinct.

Contemplating and writing about Bogner's hybrid beings clearly reveals the shortcomings of our linguistic and conceptual categories. Her paintings deconstruct these structures and show that our conceptions of humans and animals are not given by nature, but are rather historically and culturally conditioned. They result from a network of references and distinctions, which is constantly shifting. This insight is in harmony with French philosopher Jacques Derrida's critique of an anthropocentric ethics. In The Animal That Therefore I Am, Derrida argues that traditional philosophy has constructed the animal as the “the wholly other” in order to justify the supremacy of humans. Instead, he calls for an ethics that remains open to the other––to that which defies a complete conceptualization. An ethics that excludes the animal, according to Derrida, remains fragmentary.

Her mythical creatures also recall Derrida's concept of “hauntology”, which he developed in Specters of Marx. This theory depicts how concepts and notions from the past continue to operate in the present without ever being fully present or absent. In this sense, Bogner's hybrid figures seem to be ghosts that haunt the old boundaries between humans and animals and confront us with the impermanence of our conceptions. But could the ascription of human characteristics to animals not also be interpreted as a projection of our own “being-in-the-world”? Perhaps it offers the opportunity to get a better understanding of human existence. What makes humans human, and what separates them from animals? Are Bogner's hybrid beings a threat to human identity, or are they rather a reminder that man has always been an animal as well?

The “Falling Fruits” also allows for a reflection on the nature of reality and our perception thereof. Are these fruits actually falling, or are they floating? Their depiction in Bogner's painting defies gravity and thus challenges our customary notions of physical laws. Arguably, they expose the arbitrariness of our concepts of 'normal' and 'natural'. They show that these terms are rooted in assumptions and cultural hierarchies that are by no means universally valid. Our perception of reality is conveyed through linguistic and cultural structures, and Bogner's paintings remind us that what we understand as “reality” is invariably filtered through conceptual frameworks.

The fruit still lifes in their limbo state escape conventional logic of cause and effect. They are a glimpse of the miraculous in the everyday. In Heidegger's philosophy, a thing enters into the mode of “presence-at-hand” the moment it loses its usual functionality or is removed from its practical context. Only in this state will it become an object of theoretical consideration. Floating oranges could thus be seen as a symbol of the transcendence of gravity and hence metaphorically as a symbol of the overcoming of mortality. Yet in the end they do fall––into a world they did not choose.