Each single sugar castle is invented and yet named after a very real place: Comlongon Castle is in Scotland; Schloss Steinsberg is a ruin in Ardez, Grisons; Schloss Herzberg tells the story of the rulers in Göttingen; and Babelsberg recalls the historicist summer residence of Emperor William I. At face value, the seemingly sweet, commemorative art takes the shape of cakes, the likes of which enchant children, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries. The delight in decoration and the appeal of marzipan – as a tiled roof, garlands, or latticework – cheerfully keeps disappointment at bay, for the truth is that Gina Fischli made her confections from Fimo modeling clay. The entire magical array is not edible, all the more does it give the lie to our expectations of “real” art.

The artist has a penchant for clichés from the domestic environment and transforms objects of popular culture into stumbling blocks with an off-beat sense of humor. She sees the experience of the artist, who wants to be productive and has to exhibit, as a painful symptom of our consumer society: we are most capable of exploiting know-ing and not knowing to shape desires and to profit from the process at the same time. The appearance of amateurish perfectionism wrested from the cake sculptures is a sharp criticism of the concept of “survival of the fittest,” which is also a factor in the competitive world of art.