Anja Conrad & Lucas Fastabend
4. September 2020
6 - 11 pm
Text: Angelica Horn, scroll down.
Angelica Horn is a Philosopher, based in Frankfurt.
A man was walking by a lake.
It was a cold, wet autumn day.
The air was refreshingly beautiful,
the beauty refreshingly sober.
The immigrant Nile geese watched him with pity, slightly frightened, and trotted off into the undergrowth.
They don't care about humans, just as the man doesn't care about them.....
Golden autumn leaves stick to his bare skin.
Smiling and glad that it's over, he sinks to the bottom of the mountain lake.
I greet the geese,
I greet the fish.
I greet YOU.[1]
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
In her works, the photographer Anja Conrad pursues the contradiction of the unique in everyday life. On the one hand, she attaches great importance to formal aspects. For example, specific colours and striking lines of sight are repeated and emphasized by graphical structures. While at the same time, emotional access to what has already been experienced plays an essential role. In the Red Door, recurring processes are illuminated as well as everyday perceptions and actions. It serves as a symbol for something experienced. The artist is less concerned with positive or negative interpretations of situations, but rather with participating in a certain scheme.
Lucas Fastabend's working method also resembles a search movement and the visible work on the image. The work Falter auf Universum shown in the exhibition is a black-and-white photography showing a moth sitting on an open book and crawling towards a picture of the universe. The pattern of the moth's wings shows similarities to the speckled stars of the universe, Fastabend's interest in formal correspondences becomes apparent. On the surface, all that remains is the possibility of camouflage by accessing what exists. For him, a shift in perspective is more important, in which the focus is less on the result rather than on the process of creation.
http://www.lucasfastabend.com/.
It is inherent in both their working methods that the insignificant can become a singular experience, and the seemingly inconsequential will be made essential.
[1] Fragmente aus Tau von Lucas Fastabend 2020
[2] Quelle: Knoten, Anorak, Plot von Lucas Fastabend zur Ausstellung „und beim Unkraut hüpft das Herz“ Belle-Vue, Ort für Fotografie Basel, Schweiz 2016.
[3] Quelle: Dr. Antje Krause-Wahl zur Arbeit von Lucas Fastabend, Frankfurt 2011.
Works:
Conrad: Neck #068-005, Brooklyn, NY 1996/2020, 50x50 cm plus (Haken & Fotolampe).
Fastabend: Nachtfalter / Universum 134,5 x 88 cm printed 2020
Fastabend: Untitled, Kollage, gerahmt.
Fastabend: Untitled, Kollage.
Conrad: Door #16964 (Red), Memphis TN 2012/2020, 32,25x43 cm.
Conrad: Cloud #9976 (Checkers), Memphis TN 2019/2020, 45 x 60 cm.
Conrad: Metal Canopy #2393 (Shell), Pfungstadt, Germany 2018/2020, 32,25x43 cm.
Fastabend: Untitled, Hosenstoff, Tinte plus (Stange).
Photos: © Alexander Schütz
„I greet YOU.”
Anja Conrad and Lucas Fastabend in the series “” at Studio Space in Lange Strasse 31
by Angelica Horn
Anja Conrad's photos condense reality and levels of reality. There is the image of objects and objectivity, the linking and overlapping of reflection and materiality, the combination of wall and cloud image (“Cloud #9976 (Checkers), Memphis TN” 2019/2020). It is not only about reality in its own impenetrability, it is also about the character of reality itself. What is it that we perceive as real and as reality? We cannot figure it out, and we cannot get inside it, even if we look in or out through a window. Reality remains dense and thus always takes on the character of a surface that corresponds to the reality of the photo as such. The viewer remains in front of it, in front of this strong presence that both invites and excludes him. All of the photographer's personal power lies in the image, yet she herself remains outside of it. Each image is meticulously composed, everything is entirely true to reality. Colors and shapes, lines and blurring are precisely defined and related to each other, the colors often tone-on-tone, then also in strong contrast. There is the red door (“Door,1t6964 (Red); Memphis TN” 2012/2020), which is as much a color surface as it is an image of an object, and we may wonder what is hidden behind it, who may have gone in or out. In other photos, we may wonder what kind of excerpt from reality this is, what kind of thing it is (“Metal Canopy #2393 (Shell), Pfungstadt, Germany” 2018/2020).
Others seem almost laconic, like the neck of a woman, which also becomes an impenetrable reality and color surface in the photo. The photos remain present in the viewer's memory and have an effect there. Memory and memory schemata are a mode of this work. It is the immense presence of reality and the character of reality itself that becomes image here. Impenetrable. In the work “Neck '068-005, Brooklyn” from 1996/2020, the photo is combined in this exhibition with a real installation of a hook and a photo lamp.
In a text from Anja Conrad's catalog book (“Everything is always so perfect when you are in it” by Josepha Conrad), Man Ray's picture “A l'heure de l'oberservatoire, les amoureux” is quoted, which shows a large red mouth in front of a sky full of small clouds. Reality is also combined in this “hour of observation.” The text refers to a postcard depicting Man Ray's image. The relationship is one in the distance, a greeting, perhaps a love, a long-distance love. The “you” is in the greeting, as it is in Anja Conrad's photos, without the other person being present as such. The greeting constitutes the relationship from you to you, constitutes the other as you and thus at the same time the greeter as such. Nothing more is known, nothing more is there to know yet. There is fulfillment and longing in the greeting. We do not yet know whether this is real or can become real. Even the lonely, even the dying may send greetings, and perhaps no one hears them. Perhaps the postcard will never arrive.
If humans are essentially alone in their existence, then a greeting bridges this existential difference and distance. It is in itself the question of “YOU.” The other is always a stranger. And yet we speak of a you, or precisely because of this. In the powerful reality, the other, in this case the photographer, is present. She is in the gaze that is shown. The realistic character is at the same time the perfection of this gaze. The greeting can also lie in a glance. “I greet YOU.” Whether the other also receives and accepts the greeting? This question lies between the image and the viewer. Longing is always also a longing for the past, the echo of a memory, without it having to be identifiable. Reality is not simply real. It is always new.
In his works, Lucas Fastabend combines materials and thus realities that create a new image. Here, the power of imagination comes into play, condensing and intensifying the effect. In “Bergsee” (Mountain Lake) from 2020, for example, fabric pants, a leaky pen, and a shower rod are combined, while in the small “Nil-Gänse-Blume” (Nile Goose Flower) from 2020, wood, masking tape, transfer printing, and oil paint are combined. The beholder's imagination creates the image, which then remains with him. Here, too, the question of “you” is present without being spoken, as if art itself were a greeting to the distance. A quiet fascination emanates from the materials themselves, enhanced when the collage or other material processing is photographed. The impenetrability is that of the material itself, which we can describe as such without knowing much more about it than perhaps how it can be processed and treated, how it is structured, and what structure it displays and expresses. We observe structure and thus existence. The work process itself is laid bare and thus reflected upon. The process itself is both means and end. This alone makes both the producer and the recipient present. The image becomes a presence that is as real as it is suspended. What does it tell us? What does it mean? Reality is ultimately hidden here, and yet it is also present. There is a reference to the existing, to existence, to the existential. Hold is the material of the world and of art itself.It is no coincidence that Lucas Fastabend accompanies this presentation of his works—the ones mentioned above and Snag from 2015 (photogram on baryta paper, photocopies, lacquer, color photography) as well as Falter auf Universum from 2010/2020 (photographed analog photo print) – with his own poem in which a man, a mountain lake, and Nile geese appear. Here, too, imagination counts. When the man finally sinks into the mountain lake, the last words are “I greet YOU.” In the processuality, the materials interact with each other, as it were, revealing differences and similarities. Love is and can be.
There is something surreal about this compartment, this small antechamber to the studio at Lange Straße 31, represented and presented by the positions of Anja Conrad and Lucas Fastabend. The combination and condensation of reality in photography is matched by the combination of materials and the unleashing of the imagination, so that in this exhibition, curated by Carolin Kropff, the logic of such a correspondence can be contemplated in one evening. The two positions greet each other.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Angelica Horn
© Frankfurt am Main 2020
Kindly supported by Kulturamt Frankfurt.