Introduction
When we were almost done remodelling the gallery unexpected technical complications came up that forced us to postpone the originally planned exhibition with Paul Graham and Diana Thater. Thus the first exhibition's original title WAS NUN? (NOW WHAT?) unintentionally turned into a quite realistic motto.
Beside our established artists from the time in Cologne the gallery also wants to present new positions that fit into our program. This interest now is manifested in this exhibition.
It is more than just a group exhibit, rather it articulates the interest of young German positions in a phenomenon rather different from the exhibition “Deutschlandbilder” (Images of Germany) which takes place at the same time.
The works of Pia Greschner, Les Schließer, Matti Braun, and Christoph Keller demonstrate the artists' interests in the forms of visual messages situated within time. They are not products of theory/recapitulation, rather they seem to be in the air.
Once I believed that time was horizontal and if I looked straight ahead I could see next Thursday. Now I think that time is vertical, diagonal and perpendicular – Duane Michaels
Christoph Keller manipulated and modified the hardware of a camera so that it can bring the temporal axis into the picture which is thus temporally altered.
If the camera is fixed into a position in front of an immobile background then the image of time is recognizable on the film as even, horizontal lines. A photographic diagram of movement created through the relative movement of the object. You see the world as through a crack of a door where things pass by – Christoph Keller
In her video stills Blue Hour 1, 2 and 3, Pia Greschner shows sketchy, obscure meeting places in timeless situations which cannot easily be placed within a spatial or semantic context. She wants to “stretch and experience time on a subjective level. Each field of vision determines what is of vision - my interest lies in what is off”
Les Schließer is visualizing his work of the last couple of months which has been dedicated to the phenomena of gaps in perception and memory, to the breakdown of narrativity, and the resulting reformation of links and connections.
“I am interested in the gap as an empty space in the perception of the self, as a field that cannot be really grasped because one cannot remember. Depictions of the gap are thus always bound to fail.”
Matti Braun's stools may have been touched so many times that they give the impression of being well-worn and evenly sanded. At the same time it is quite impossible to maintain a stable position for observation from any one of the stools. His ceramic plates are an artist's platform from other times, but just because of this their motives and colors will not
fade when transported into future centuries.