About Kurt Buchwald
Buchwald adopted an experimental approach to counteract 1980s GDR social documentary photography. He subsequently worked on the project "Bilder+Blenden" ("Images+Apertures") in the 1990s, in which a black aperture within the image obstructs the gaze. In 1994 he founded the Amt für Wahrnehmungsstörung (Office for Perceptual Disturbance). The connection between action art and photography is the central leitmotif that runs through Buchwald’s work. This is not always visible and disappears in the process of creating images. Beginning in 2001, he conducted experiments with light falling into a geometrically defined space. The group of works "im Kreis der Wahrnehmung" ("in the circle of perception") dates from this period. During the "coronavirus year", the artist engaged with his own shadowy silhouette and photography’s spiritual dimension. The magic of image creation and encounters with an enigmatic counterpart became his thematic focus. A hand is visible in the shadow images. The gesture hints that grasping something physically is also about "grasping the world" conceptually – Buchwald's motivation to photograph and understand.
Tamara Lorenz about the series "Useful Fictions" (since 2020)
Useful fictions are exemplary narratives of the artist, titled with phenomenological terms from sociology, psychology, philosophy and contemporary events. They mirror some aspects of a world. Useful fictions are exemplary narratives of any contemplation. Useful fictions describe figures of thought.
About "The Kingdom" by Sarah Straßmann (since 2018)
In the work The Kingdom, started in 2018, Sarah Straßmann investigates the conditions and relationships between space, image space, surface, and structure. The starting point of her experiments is the ancient city Perre, an archaeological site, which belongs to a mountain range of the former kingdom of Commagene in southeastern Turkey (around 200-50 bC). A kingdom whose ruler, Antiochus, cleverly bundled various religions, and was able to hold the empire against hostile takeovers, such as secured by the Romans, for a long time. Similar to an 'archaeologist', the artist collected a variety of photographic material on site. By means of photo collages, photographic installations, video, sound, archival material and classical photographs, The Kingdom spreads the structures and conditions of two and three-dimensional spaces. On the other hand, it leads to absurdity. In addition to these pictorial aspects, thoughts on space and representation, architecture and power as well as space as a common ground are also raised and questioned.
