In art, soap is an unusual and highly ambiguous material. Its nature – soft, malleable, ephemeral, yet universally familiar and functional – creates a tension between sculptural presence and transience, individuality and mass production. It also carries the connotative meanings of purity, care, and intimacy inherent in its everyday use, which directly influence the relationship between the work, the artist, and the viewer.
In combination with chocolate, Janine Antoni (* 1964) uses soap as a medium in Lick and Lather (Öffnet in einem neuen Tab), 1993–1994, soap is used as a medium to reflect on the relationship between body, identity, and perception. Antoni shapes self-portraits in the form of busts out of soap and chocolate, only to dissolve them by licking, chewing, and rubbing them with water. The soap thus becomes a temporary vessel for self-image and physical presence: the work exists only in the tension between sculpture and dissolution, visible form and ephemeral action. The sensory experience of the material – its olfactory presence, its consistency, the possibility of touch and dissolution – turns the viewers into participants in the fragility of identity and self-representation.
Ottmar Hörl (* 1950), on the other hand, takes a socially reflective approach with Unschuld (Seife) | Innocence (soap), 1997. The work, a commercially available bar of soap with an embossed design in a plastic container with a printed label, was planned as a multiple in an edition of 82,000,000 copies, with the aim of making a copy accessible to every German citizen. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, which highlighted the importance of hand hygiene for society as a whole, Hörl’s soap appears less as a sensual, intimate medium of physical health. Rather, it is a symbol of catharsis and purification from all our transgressions, enabling us to wash our hands not merely in a metaphorical innocence. In its large-scale production, this humorous work equally addresses questions of mass production, consumption, and the democratic accessibility of art. Soap’s properties – such as malleability and transience – remain present, yet they are placed within the context of social, political, and ironic contemplation.