ELLEN BORNKESSEL, BETTINA LOCKEMANN | 1:1
Opening: Friday, 21 November, 7 p.m.
Exhibition: 22 November - 20 December 2008
The exhibition 1:1 at the Loris Gallery brings contrasting worlds together. In a joint exhibition by Ellen Bornkessel and Bettina Lockemann, nature and urbanity engage in dialogue. Each of the two artists from Cologne has adopted a highly individual approach to documentary photography. Ellen Bornkessel closes in on idyllic natural settings, while Bettina Lockemann’s analytical eye captures built-up urban spaces.
Lockemann’s black and white photographs from the cycle Fringes of Utopia (2003), taken in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Diego, are an alternative draft to the medial – particularly popular television and film – representations of cities in the American West. The vast agglomeration areas that extend horizontally are complemented by the densely constructed verticality of the urban centres. The gradual disappearance of public space gives the impression that life itself has been shut out.
The tracking shot along the street in It’s Possible, Ellen Bornkessel’s video work from 2002, scans a deserted industrial estate in the evening sun. We hear a young girl’s voice off-stage reciting images of paradise. The constant sound of water lapping and birds singing becomes a relentless marker of the idyllic. Several notions of paradise collide in one image, producing the utterly new and unintended merely in passing. The photographic series »Wald« originated in 2004 within the framework of a book project. Two photographs from this series are shown in the exhibition. The scenic images are a reference to the strength of nature and its own independent magnitude.
The exhibition takes place within the framework of the European Photography Month Berlin.