Sophie Aigner | Bettina Lockemann. Only Just There

About

It relates to the appearance of content and concreteness in an instant, the resulting visual presence – or its blurring.

Bettina Lockemann’s black and white photographs from the series État d’Urgence show Paris in state of emergency after the terrorist attacks of November 13, 2015. On the Saturday after, the photographer wanders around central areas and registers a city in state of shock; empty streets and shops, scarcely patronized cafes and restaurants, perplexed tourists in front of shuttered museums. At the Place de la République citizens encounter each other; maybe to commemorate or simply not to be alone. Also journalists have stationed themselves there looking for answers just as the rest of the world. The city is present, visible in the pictures, but it is not itself. The pictures show it suspended in a moment between presence and absence, only just there.

Sophie Aigners Pelltattoos form faces that are only partially recognizable as such. They peel from and out of the plaster, remain fragmentary, not identifiable. The color of the plaster melts into the whiteness of the wall, which makes the objects become part of the room. Körper und Schachtel assembles body fragments and abstract spatial presentations into three-dimensional objects of glass and plaster. The appearance of their visual surfaces remains ephemeral and unseizable, mediating a visual presence without being completely present.