MICHAEL PFROMMER
*1972, Leonberg
Studium an der Städelschule von 1997 - 2003, Meisterschüler bei Prof. Ayse Erkmen
“Down in the park where the chant is 'death, death, death' until the sun cries morning”
A selection of drawings hung in a birds-eye-view representation of Prospect Park Brooklyn, NY.
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Den of the Squirrel
The great shrill of their voices echoes through the forest as they set out like beacons soaring through the air on their wing like flaps of skin. The flying squirrel learns to take flight in as little as three months after birth. Learning early on the ways and woes of the forest, he resides in a den high above the ground, safe from earthly predators, and lives in a haven surrounded by nuts and berries to feed upon. Domesticated in some countries but most commonly wild, the flying squirrel spends its entire life off the ground. They find all they need in the trees and sail from one to another at ease.
The squirrels live in a dimension unknown to man. Their freedom, their purpose, all so beautifully defined and designed, as flight enables the squirrel to move freely through the forest. Air is to him what the ocean is to man, as lost and forgotten as the depths of our greatest seas. It is unfathomable for the flying squirrel to scamper along the soil. This is what may in comparison to the common squirrel be so haunting and mysterious about him.
There is an Inuit tribe which sends off its elders at a predetermined age on sheets of ice to die. The flying squirrel which mates for life and lives in numbers up to 12 in a den, also practices in such a ritual. As the aging squirrels become weaker and less able to soar through the trees, they experience a sorrowful longing for this experience. The distance at which they soar becomes smaller and smaller, until they are almost unable to experience the feel of flight at all. At this point, the elder squirrel, in the company of their group, will climb the highest tree in the forest. Followed by the other squirrels they will jump, not opening their arms, falling to collide with the earth at fatal speed. The other squirrels will soar with him catching themselves on lower branches to witness his fate.