MEDIA

SURFACES | INTERFACES

RCRmagazin from 5.9.2023 (translated)

 

SURFACES | INTERFACES
Koschies – K. Haensch

With the exhibition SURFACES | INTERFACES, the HAWK gallery PROJEKTOR opposite the Jewish Museum in Berlin Kreuzberg presents a fascinating juxtaposition of works by the artist duo KOSCHIES and photographic observations by KONSTANTIN HAENSCH. On the one hand, panoramic heads serving as concise counterpoints to the ubiquity of smartphone photography and, on the other hand, cultural observations of quotidian China enabled by the critical use of this very technology.

Who is afraid of simultaneity…

Technically sophisticated and archaic at the same time: the head panoramas by the artist duo KOSCHIES are not organised around a vanishing point, but take place entirely on the surface. With their time-slit camera shots, the two artists transform temporal succession into spatial juxtaposition and enter new visual terrain – an alternative concept to the photographic navel-gazing of the selfie.

KOSCHIES

Due to the long exposure time and the high, sustained concentration of the subjects, the 360° portraits are reminiscent of the early days of portrait photography; in their nature as well as their form of representation, they simultaneously embody a further development of the genre. In contrast to conventional cameras, the time-slit cameras used for this purpose do not have a mechanical shutter. The picture is taken through a permanently open, narrow slit and is exposed “seamlessly” in constant movement.

 

„One kind of river and mountain raise one kind of people.“

The Chinese proverb describes how environments shape identities. Today, rivers and mountains should be “instagrammable” and “wechatable”. In such an attention and platform economy, both the environment and people are being restructured. KONSTANTIN HAENSCH’s second-order photographic observations explore these processes using the example of everyday cultural content production in China. 

FEMALE GAZE @ K.-HAENSCH

K. HAENSCH

In this way, the “rivers and mountains” become carefully designed, staged and uncanny environments for the mass production of digital content. The specific appeal of a place is measured by its potential to generate “likes” and “shares”, whereby the public space becomes part of digital economic value generation.

Gallery PROJEKTOR – Markgrafenstraße 88, 10969 Berlin
Art Week 13 – 17 September: 11:00 – 19:00
22 September – 21 October: 14:00 – 19:00

The large-format illustrated book KOSCHIES | SURFACES – with essays by Sigrid Weigel, Klaus Honnef and Christoph Tannert – has been published by Deutscher Kunstverlag to accompany the cycle of paintings by the artist duo Koschies.