Narratives of assault, emotional blackmail and structural abuse of power.

This is what „Chapters of Violence“ brings to light. The artists Veronika Christine Dräxler and Patrick Alan Banfield initiate a joint process of reflection and reappraisal at Galerie Weißer Elefant, which deals with misogynous structures in the exhibition business that go far beyond the boundaries of the gallery spaces. A process is conducted from multiple perspectives: female, male, and institutional.

Personal experiences of trauma are related to inherent social conventions and hierarchies presented in the exhibition „Chapters of Violence“. The exhibition is a glimpse of the process of disclosing collective traumas that led to the construction of the same institutional frameworks within which the exhibition itself takes place. At the same time, the combined works of Dräxler and Banfield examine the inherent ambivalence of the symptoms of social trauma:

What is the relationship between toxic masculinity, softness and vulnerability?

At whose expense can a healing process take place, and who „pays“ for it – in both an economic and emotional context? The exhibition is an installed arrangement that integrates all individual works and spaces into an overarching concept.

Maintaining the balance of power.

In the process of staging it became clear to Patrick Alan Banfield and Veronika Christine Dräxler that they needed to have full creative control over at least one individual room, rather than designing all the ten rooms together. To maintain the balance of power.

The "Trophy Wife Room" by Veronika Dräxler is composed by her private furniture, belongings and photographs from an Ecuadorian Holy Site of Mother Mary founded by a close family member and the Bavarian Missionaries Museum Archabbey of St. Ottilien, mixed with belongings from a befriended huntress, filled with the sound of a Remix of "Bang, bang my baby shot me down". Taxidermy, champagne and designer brands: the residence of a woman with elevated needs - as opposed to the "Man Cave" by Patrick Alan Banfield that houses both the horny teenage boy and the ego-shooter's pleasures.