A MISSED CHANCE TO WONDERLAND

 

Broken ride    100 x 120 cm     2009

Falling wonder    180 x 115    2010

For a long period of time, Coney Island and its amusementpark was a place for dreaming, a place for experimenting and a place where people let their emotions run free and where you broke the everyday way of behaviour.
Coney Island was the birth place of architectural structures and technological inventions as for example larger steel constructions, the elevator and the first incubators. Objects that would be spread around the world and have impact on the way people live today.

It was the place where these real physical structures and inventions met with the surreal world of freakshows, dwarf towns and amusements, that all provoked an abnormal behaviour and became a playground for the normal visitor. People came here to experiment with something new, to relax and to find love.

For a long period the amusement park was this extraordinary place of exception where people went. But during the last 40 years the area has gradually lost its glamour and innovative character. The attention has been moved to Manhattan, and Coney Island is now more a subject of decay and trashy character.
An empty shell, that still contains traces of this weird and special place, where reality meets the surreal.