Certain works, modeled in clay and cast in fibreglass explore aspects of reward within systems of power. Blazing Hero, 2002 is a life-size incarnation of a plastic toy soldier. Its parts set into a frame, the figure is made tenable through the demands of its scale and the anguish expressed in its dismembered parts.

Many children have at one time unfixed the parts of a token toy from its plastic frame and enjoyed reconstructing the figurine. In Von Kohler's version this is a frustrating impossibility. Her trapped soldier is irrevocably fragmented - the potential power of a unified body made agonised and impotent. A monument to the latent horror in war toys, Von Kohler's hero twists playtime personas with the violence of adult reality. It becomes a memorial to a heroic ideal that may be nothing more than an empty charade, a mechanism of propaganda. - Other more structural works look at the architecture of compromise. Crashbarrier, 2002 is a 2.1x6.5m enlarged section of a Scalextrix crash barrier. In the gallery, its exaggerated angle forced visitors down a specific path. Blocking access to an empty wall, it also rendered most of the gallery useless. In toys, crash barriers serve an aesthetic function, lending truth to the scaled model. Their inclusion also initiates awareness of safety and its limits. In an adult world, road markings dictate guidelines for the navigation of shared space. They form a language that tells us where, when and how to proceed. We acknowledge these restrictions as necessary, to the extent we no longer see them. Familiarity camouflages their influence.

By transferring these codes of conduct to the gallery space, Von Kohler questions how limitations are learnt, imposed and ultimately accepted, within and outside gallery conventions.

For PM Von Kohler extends her interest in toys and heroism. She has made thousands of casts from a mould of Spiderman's head. Each tiny piece is mounted directly onto the wall, so that a myriad of masked faces cover sections of the gallery wall in a uniform colour and pattern. A wallpapered clone invasion of an object that has already been reproduced in the millions, just like the heroic sculpture or deed itself. © Soraya Rodriguez 2004