Lilly Grote's medium are boxes: found boxes, built boxes, shrines and self-made constructions, the insides of which she has transformed into complex marvels. They are containers of surreal worlds in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell. They tell stories as if in a dream, when the dimensions shift and surprising encounters are possible at any moment. Often a mysterious light roams through them, in the light of which Chinese warriors meet coarse butcher's knives, Lewis Carroll's Alice meets ping-pong balls, and Meret Oppenheim's little fur teacup meets the naked spoon. These boxes, with their mounted narrative form and light production also have something in common with the black box of cinema, another medium with which Lilly Grote is also engaged in as filmmaker.

Dr. Katharina Sykora.