The infrastructure of gentrification is visible and garish. In Kurfürstenstraße, the main red streetsperm– West Berlin’s gallery district – assorted electric scooters litter the roadsides; overhead, pink and blue pipes stretch like varicose veins, carrying swampy groundwater to land ripe for development. These colors, however garish, fade in the rubbings of Dora Budor. The tripartite series of rubbings on fine-grit sandpaper, titled ‘Terror Terroir’, 2023, was done locally, abstracting and subtracting from the skin of the city, producing watercolor-like bruises that flatten three dimensions in two.
A more sardonic practical effect was used to make Orange Film I And orange movie II (both 2023). Working with artist Noah Barker, Budor rigged a camera with a glass of orange wine to use the trendy libation as a second lens. Playing on a loop, the films depict the deindustrialization redevelopment projects and so-called public art of midtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, here a jumbled funhouse of glass and chrome. On the ground floor, mounted on low and elegant plinths, a group of works entitled “Autophones”, 2022-23, vibrates heartily. Modeled after molds for the “male” (or “positive”) forms of industrial casting components, the sculptures are made using tonewoods typically reserved for wind and string instruments, so that the rippling vibrations of sex toys hide in the belly of every object. resonate softly. While “Terror Terroir” and the Orange The films imbue this exhibition with a murky sense of self and site, the sublime mechanism of the “Autophones” best expressing Budor’s disdain for the privatization of pleasure.
