Anna-Sophie Berger on religious garb and consumer aesthetics

"Saint Francis is disrobing, pulling a linen shirt over his head as he rejects his father's wealth and embraces God through a vow of poverty. Both of his arms are in the sleeves, and his bourgeois father is kneeling on the floor, taking the shirt in order to conserve it, perhaps saving it from being soiled."

"Francis's rejection of worldly possessions really is an outrageous act coming from a young, wealthy man, who makes the claim that we should reject the class relations of the time and give away everything we have—a dangerous proposition in the medieval era, antiquity, or now, for that matter."

"Starting from this cyclical act of disrobing and covering in the painting, I began working on the sculpture Saint Francis, 2026, over the course of a residency during a pretty harsh Berlin winter. I remember being at the studio and thinking, 'How can I make this sculpture without casts or mannequins or clay models?'"

The artist drew inspiration from Walter Benjamin and Georg Simmel's concept of the microscopic gaze—examining specific phenomena and dialectically connecting them to larger sociological contexts. A sixteenth-century painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art depicting Saint Francis renouncing his wealth and embracing poverty became central to the work. The painting shows Francis disrobing while his father kneels to preserve the shirt and a bishop covers him with a velvet coat. This scene represents a radical rejection of class relations and worldly possessions. During a Berlin residency, the artist created a sculpture titled Saint Francis, 2026, exploring the cyclical act of disrobing and covering without using traditional sculptural methods like casts, mannequins, or clay models.

Read at Artforum