A purple carpet, gold barrier tape, artificial neon light, humming, dark beats you can feel. The toilet attendant is eating a grilled fish and scattering glass marbles on the dance floor. Two well-dressed men sit at the bar, looking deep into each other’s eyes. An elderly lady chats animatedly with her fake Prada bag while the barman pours milk into her martini glass. The rose seller comes back from washing his hands and carves a mobile phone number into his forearm with a spike. A loud bang, a clear celebration. Eagerly awaited since 2012, Christine Tanqueray’s fictional club “SANZELIZE” finally opens its doors in March 2015.
“Sanzelize” is the Turkish word for the Champs-Élysées in Paris, one of the grandest boulevards in the world. The idea behind Christine Tanqueray’s art project is to announce a new, imaginative and glamourous club in Munich, which in reality does not exist. The work “SANZELIZE” intends to create a fictional space filled with all the expectations and incidents that could occur during a night in a club: booming sound, flirts, flashing lights, dance floors, promises and disappointments. Yet it is all just an illusion, the dazzling club turns out to be a neon sign.
Christine Tanqueray drew inspiration for the space-filling neon sculpture “HA-HA” from a still in Daniel Clowes’s comic Mister Wonderful: AND AFTER A WHILE THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE.
Christine Tanqueray, born in 1978 in Munich, lives and works in Munich.
