It never changes to stop, 2014-2016
Western European shopping streets are amazingly exchangeable: pedestrian zones or unidirectional axes, the ground floor of existing homes accommodate chain stores and employment offices. In smaller provincial towns competition from larger retailers along highways and malls is manifest: smaller, autonomous and typical shops disappear, leaving empty front shop windows here and there. They are places where time comes to a standstill. These places are disruptive to the entrepreneur’s soul, however a poetic oasis for those who’re open to musing. Empty windows, old posters and calendars, fading colours, dust and real estate agencies placards define a frozen and sleepy atmosphere that strongly contrasts with the bustle of everyday life. That mental stagnation was intriguing to Sarah Van Marcke. The remains of the commodity or a few well-chosen attributes appear in her photographic work as frozen fetishes, acting simultaneously as lightly and oppressive. A shoe, a coat hanger, a suit: isolated and freed from the context of temporary sales or a seasonal fair they come to us as a strange melancholic sculptures.
