Exuviae

 

Ende der neunziger Jahre, ich war Kunststudent an der UdK Berlin und interessierte mich für Maler wie James Ensor und Chaim Soutine, hatte ich einen intensiven, euphorisch stimmenden Traum: Ich befand mich in einem dunklen Höhlenlabyrinth, an dessen hohen unregelmäßigen Wänden hier und da großformatige farbige Lichterscheinungen aufleuchteten. Sie wirkten wie fragmentierte Hologramme, deren vielschichtige Kompositionen sich stetig wandelten.

2015 entstanden die ersten dreidimensionalen Modelle aus Fundstücken, die den Bildtopos des Traums aufnahmen. Darauf geworfene Projektionen von Fotografien und Fotocollagen erzeugten ein Wechselspiel zwischen den Oberflächen und Volumina und den darauf projizierten Motiven. Die Intervention ist im Wesentlichen eine haptische und analoge. 

 

Der Ausstellungstitel Exuviae nimmt in seiner Mehrdeutigkeit das Spiel der Bildebenen auf: Im Sinne abgeworfener Häute (Exuviae) meint er die sich stetig erneuernde Substanz und ihre funktionalen Hüllen, die Bestimmung von Körpergrenzen und Körperformen. Diese Phänomene des Erscheinens und Verschwindens finden sich in den ephemeren virtuellen Häuten der fotografisch inszenierten Objekte und Körper wieder.

In einem anderen historischen Gebrauch des Begriffes Exuviae für die Aufbewahrung von Gebeinen stellt der Titel einen Bezug zur ursprünglichen Funktion des Ausstellungsorts La Crypte, der Krypta der neugotischen Kirche St. Eugénie in Biarritz, her.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      V.S. 2019

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Cover Artwork: Michael Schinköthe

 

Exuviae

 

In the late Nineties when I was an art student at Berlin University of the Arts and interested in painters like James Ensor and Chaim Soutine I had an intense and exhilarating dream: I found myself in a dark cave labyrinth, on its high irregular walls flashes of large colourful lights. They looked like abstract holograms, their multi-layered compositions changing depending on the viewpoint.

After several intermediate stages I created the first photographic studies in three-dimensional settings in 2015, drawing on the topoi of the images in the dream: projections of photographs and photo collages in multiple forms extended the pictorial space while at the same time creating an interplay between materials and inconsistencies within the themes.

In the projection spaces that I have been building since, some of them distorting the perspec-tive, the surface structures are integrated in the interplay of the projected illusions.

The resulting hybrid image compositions can be experienced both on a planar level as well as spatially. The emerging phantasmagoria are not just fixed spatial illusions but due to the switch in perception between plane and space they frequently appear as optical illusions. As a form of bricolage the intention is to make the provisional construc-tion from found materials and objects visible in the photographs. In that way the installations always refer to their site of creation.

The exhibition title Exuviae picks up on the interplay of the different pictorial levels: in the sense of shed skins (Exuviae) it refers to the constantly renewing substance and its functional shell, the definition of physical boundaries and physical forms. These phenomena of appearance and disappearance are found again in the ephemeral virtual skins of the objects and bodies staged in the photographs. A different historical meaning of the term Exuviae as the repository for remains draws the connection to the original use of the exhibition space La Crypte, which used to be the crypt of the neo-Gothic church St. Eugénie in Biarritz before it was turned into a municipal gallery.

In addition to the photographs, the installations shown in the exhibition are three-dimensional auratic light productions, but they also lay open the material of the artistic processes, thereby becoming shed skins themselves.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          V.S.2019                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Cover Artwork: Michael Schinköthe