The work of Dannielle Tegeder is thoughtful and visual. She seems to be "mapping" her external world in a genuine way. Her early works (pre-2004/5) are these beautiful "architectural plans" for fantasy, underground cities.
These maps recorded not physical spaces (real or imagined) as much as cultural needs, wants, and dearth. The title of the above work? Community Under Construction w/ Jumbo Love Dot Boiler; Six Safety Vessel Station, Containing Habitats & Rainbow Structures; Five Square Tower High Rises; Dangling Safety Chrysalis; Abandoned Oz City; Side Room w/ Circle Storage. Ink, gouache, acrylic, colored pencil, marker & pastel on paper, 56 x 80 in., 2004.
The city plans engaged with the point where physicality interfaces with societal metaphysicality. That "point" lies in both the spacial and emotional realms- a physical structure which bears emotional burden. Her underground cities live out these fantasies, carefully constructing the appropriate physical structures to dispel fears, promise safety, and provide love.
The trajectory of her work has lead her on this tightrope of the physical/emotional interface. She began to engage with the physical representation of her structures (as installations), which of course departs somewhat from the neutral terrain of the pure fantastical-- how do we trace the emotional lineage of our structures when we are confronted with them as structures?
Her 2006 show at Priska Juschka (and subsequent 2007 work) brought her to a new place: the third dimension. Her physical/ emotional point of interface (as I like to think of it) morphed in three-dimensional drawings of angles, lines, and colors. Her "point" had abstracted. It was as if she had gone deeper into the point of interface, on a cellular level, say, and was now examining the actual thought-molecule of human desire and destruction, encapsulated in the cell before it can be made into a city. Title of a 2007 work? Instructions for Utopian Gray World, Machine & Copper Inner Structure, Ink, dye, pencil, marker, acrylic, gouache on Fabriano Murillo paper, 59 x 82 in., 2007
It is a perfect widening of the lens, or narrowing of it. From the physical community space, emotions registered in space... to the "Instructions" for a Utopia...instructions are the DNA of what is to come, they exist only in thought. In fact, they are thought! I applaud the sincere journey into a realm that could use some mapping.
