In his project Jetztzeit, Bernard ter Hoeven examines a modern society laden with inherited symbols from past cultures. The project’s elements are assembled from familiar sacred, mythological, and historical images originally created to transmit knowledge of Truth. What remains is a vestigial memory of cultural archetypes, drawn from the history of art as a repository of forgotten narratives. 

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Any void invites filling, and these works draw in meanings of our own moment. Contemporary culture can supply only what mass media offers as core values and transmissible meanings. Accordingly, attributes of consumer iconography surface — advertising tropes, society figures, athletic motifs. Even the ostensibly impersonal figures resemble the ideal human of mass culture: ageless, sexually uninhibited, and emotionally cool.