Introduction

With Pierre Pierre, Matti Braun continues his investigation of historical and cultural traces that began in Senegal and Morocco. For his fourth solo exhibition at Esther Schipper, he has subjected the gallery architecture to fundamental modifications. The backdrop for this presentation of new works consists of fluorescing walls and ceilings, which are rendered luminescent by means of UV light. Natural daylight entering the gallery generates a constantly changing luminous atmosphere. The gallery’s parquet floor has been covered with a layer of screed—Matti Braun has prepared his own ground for Pierre Pierre.

For the first time the artist presents a group of works consisting of watercolors on raw silk and cotton framed in steel. The unique watercolors are hand-crafted by Matti Braun. They were produced by means of an experimental textile process, and represent a continuation of his Batiks, wall hangings, and Patolas, which—in contrast to the watercolors—are produced by using traditional techniques acquired by the artist as an autodidact.

With the 10-part series of black-and-white offset prints entitled Pierre Pierre, Matti Braun juxtaposes a new group of works with the color offset prints bearing the title Pierre, exhibited already in 2009 at L’appartement 22, an independent exhibition space in Rabat (Morocco). Pierre Pierre features motifs from various origins. Once we realize that the photograph of an African mask used in Pierre Pierre was a poster motif for the first Festival des Arts Nègres in Dakar in 1966, the further concrete references to Léopold Sédar Senghor, the lyric poet who was Senegal’s first elected president from 1960 to 1980, become apparent. A number of stories concerning Senghor constitute a central point of reference for the series Pierre and Pierre Pierre. At times, it appears the wealth of associations allows these images to take on lives of their own. We also encounter highly personal but hermetic documents related to Matti Braun, such as photographs of a beach, a treetop, or a marble floor reflecting colored light.

Visitors to Pierre Pierre enter a heterogeneous universe of images whose contents become accessible through the web of meanings that are engendered by their interrelationships. How do stories arise? Through the narration and the joining together of individual stories. Through his image collages, Matti Braun confronts us with this fragile process by which cultural meaning is produced, and at the same time takes a step backward. His image universe is too unstable and too speculative to allow itself to be arrested and fixed into coherent contexts. This is left to us—in a space that embraces this desire for meaning, and which at the same time compels us to ask what it is we are actually pursuing.