there is always enough shadow (E)
for Der Greif – Artist Blog
2017
related works
das Eck
These photographs have been selected from two of Andrea’s bodies of work, “Das Eck”, and “Erbgericht”. The former is made up of pictures taken in the city of Koblenz, while the latter consists of a visual dissection of a traditional guesthouse in east Germany.
Both works focus on a particular place, and operate on at least three different levels of experience: space, colour and memory.
Andrea’s photography is a visual fragmentation of the visible world. It feels like looking at something you see every day through a microscope: you know it is the same object, but it looks completely different, which opens unprecedented routes to all kinds of discoveries. Still, although there is something scientific in Andrea’s approach to reality, we are not invited to look at the world through her lens so we can crack its code. We are instead encouraged to confront our own perception of it.
Space is turned inside out by an extremely technical use of photography. Artificial lighting in “Erbgericht” and the clever framing of modernist architecture in “Das Eck” are used to create colour fields reminiscent of concrete art, but that here are serving a different, and less analytic, purpose: that of unlocking the private space of memory. There is no math, no lyricism, no symbolism to be seen in Andrea’s pictures. There is instead something playful, although never childish, in the places she invents. Most importantly, although the images are apparently flat, there is always some depth, there is always enough shadow: that of a door half opened, that of the dark blue area beyond wooden banisters, that coming out of an attic and projecting itself down on a flight of stairs. And as we know from Bachelard, but also from Tanizaki, dark corners and niches are inhabited by reveries and sacred things.
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