2020

2020 is a series of constructed scenes. It’s not so much about the virus itself as it is about the impact of the virus on the individual and society: self-isolation and lockdown, often leading to loneliness, boredom and frustration. The daily walk to the supermarket was previously seen as a necessary evil. Now it became the highlight of the day for many, only to discover empty shelves as a result of irrational consumer behaviour. At the beginning of the lockdown, I got stranded in the Alps. Suddenly all of the borders were closed, and I couldn’t get back to London for seven weeks. When I finally arrived back in the city at the beginning of May, I was in shock. It seemed to me that all of London had turned into a huge, temporary morgue. My studio is less than two miles from the hospital in Whitechapel, which had the highest number of coronavirus fatalities in the entire country. I had come from the splendid isolation of the Alps, right into the epicentre of the pandemic in Europe. After two weeks, I decided to paint my studio black and reflect on these experiences in a new series of works. The images submitted were shot in May. But, as the year is not over yet, the project is ongoing, too.

G. Roland Biermann was born in Bonn, Germany. He studied at New York University and is now based in London. He is a conceptual artist working with photography, film, sculpture and installation. He often works with banal everyday objects, such as plastic carrier bags, oil barrels and motorway crash barriers or, in the case of this project, with recycled supermarket shelves, shopping baskets and trolleys, toilet tissue and hand-sanitiser.