Alexander Bornschein
17 Jan - 07 Mar 2015
ALEXANDER BORNSCHEIN
as a matter of fact
17 January – 7 March 2015
as a matter of fact is Alexander Bornschein’s (*1986) first solo exhibition at Linn Lühn.
For this exhibition, Bornschein conceived a series of works that are directly related to the gallery’s architecture. Yet the situative feedback loop to the spatial givens is only one theme of his art; a far greater weight is borne by the dialogue with space, image and body.
Alexander Bornschein creates a pictorial grammar that objectifies structures of (photographic) depiction, inaugurating the dissolution of the perspectival in favour of a conceptual way of looking.
In concrete terms, this can be seen in the separation from motif and in the emphasis of individual pictorial layers: Bornschein’s screen prints adhere to the front and back of the translucent Plexiglas image carriers, almost like a coat; the carriers, which lean upright against the wall, thus become independent bodies in space. The pictorial layers themselves are condensed multifariously. To wit, Bornschein contrasts the representational pictorial space of photographic templates with monochrome, which surrounds the photo-technically reproduced views like a bracket – sometimes in the form of a white, planar industrial print, sometimes in an almost painterly gesture. Motifs such as interiors and exteriors, showrooms, displays for clothes and the clothes themselves here surround certain observational settings – which are converted to systems of observation in Alexander Bornschein’s pictorial compositions – from various perspectives.
In Alexander Bornschein’s accumulation, the photographic reproduction, whose detail always reveals a many-coloured CMYK screen, appears almost as a historical layer, a preliminary stage of a form of articulation which is clearly based on a stratification of what is perceptible, of the emphasis and concealment thereof. This stratification draws upon the whole range of reproduction: we see photogram-like negatives of everyday objects, which are superimposed over views of spaces existing in reality or of identity-forming objects, but which are themselves continually deconstructed via the visualisation of their vividness on the material and interposed with the momentarily appearing image sequences on the material’s reflective surface. The colour printed on the Plexiglas dissolves, cloud-like, in the image’s corners or is cut off at the edge, so that the image’s transparency enters into a superimposition with the architecture that lies behind, with the structure of the wall or the surface of the floor. Imagination, depiction, body and space melt into each other.
The feedback loop between architecture and image thus also flows into Bornschein’s mural. The wallpaper, laid across corners, shows the structure of one of the exhibition rooms’ walls as a digital reconstruction. It creates a structural doubling, while Bornschein’s print does not reproduce the white of the wall but a colour progression from light grey to black instead. The print adapts itself to the spatial situation, encloses the room’s entrance and exit in the manner of a frame, while simultaneously becoming a background for the supply lines emerging in white: a mirror referring to the free-standing works. But “Deep Haus,” which is the mural’s title, shows itself to be a positive and negative at once, while Bornschein’s single plates stratify the positive and negative modes of photography and turn them into diagrammatic display windows. What do they offer? Descriptive structure, emptiness and reflections about their relationship.
As a matter of fact, cutting-edge.
Christina Irrgang
as a matter of fact
17 January – 7 March 2015
as a matter of fact is Alexander Bornschein’s (*1986) first solo exhibition at Linn Lühn.
For this exhibition, Bornschein conceived a series of works that are directly related to the gallery’s architecture. Yet the situative feedback loop to the spatial givens is only one theme of his art; a far greater weight is borne by the dialogue with space, image and body.
Alexander Bornschein creates a pictorial grammar that objectifies structures of (photographic) depiction, inaugurating the dissolution of the perspectival in favour of a conceptual way of looking.
In concrete terms, this can be seen in the separation from motif and in the emphasis of individual pictorial layers: Bornschein’s screen prints adhere to the front and back of the translucent Plexiglas image carriers, almost like a coat; the carriers, which lean upright against the wall, thus become independent bodies in space. The pictorial layers themselves are condensed multifariously. To wit, Bornschein contrasts the representational pictorial space of photographic templates with monochrome, which surrounds the photo-technically reproduced views like a bracket – sometimes in the form of a white, planar industrial print, sometimes in an almost painterly gesture. Motifs such as interiors and exteriors, showrooms, displays for clothes and the clothes themselves here surround certain observational settings – which are converted to systems of observation in Alexander Bornschein’s pictorial compositions – from various perspectives.
In Alexander Bornschein’s accumulation, the photographic reproduction, whose detail always reveals a many-coloured CMYK screen, appears almost as a historical layer, a preliminary stage of a form of articulation which is clearly based on a stratification of what is perceptible, of the emphasis and concealment thereof. This stratification draws upon the whole range of reproduction: we see photogram-like negatives of everyday objects, which are superimposed over views of spaces existing in reality or of identity-forming objects, but which are themselves continually deconstructed via the visualisation of their vividness on the material and interposed with the momentarily appearing image sequences on the material’s reflective surface. The colour printed on the Plexiglas dissolves, cloud-like, in the image’s corners or is cut off at the edge, so that the image’s transparency enters into a superimposition with the architecture that lies behind, with the structure of the wall or the surface of the floor. Imagination, depiction, body and space melt into each other.
The feedback loop between architecture and image thus also flows into Bornschein’s mural. The wallpaper, laid across corners, shows the structure of one of the exhibition rooms’ walls as a digital reconstruction. It creates a structural doubling, while Bornschein’s print does not reproduce the white of the wall but a colour progression from light grey to black instead. The print adapts itself to the spatial situation, encloses the room’s entrance and exit in the manner of a frame, while simultaneously becoming a background for the supply lines emerging in white: a mirror referring to the free-standing works. But “Deep Haus,” which is the mural’s title, shows itself to be a positive and negative at once, while Bornschein’s single plates stratify the positive and negative modes of photography and turn them into diagrammatic display windows. What do they offer? Descriptive structure, emptiness and reflections about their relationship.
As a matter of fact, cutting-edge.
Christina Irrgang