OLD BROWN SHOE
Studio-exhibition of the Liverpool artist Susan Leask and the Cologne
photographer Anna E. Strengthening the studio of Anna E. Strengthening
Right in ordinary life a man suddenly sees things that touch him so
much that he almost loses the wording in force. Poetry is spreading,
accompanied by the feeling, come to the mystery of life up close.
It can glance at an old brown shoe happen at the roadside or in the
view of a human face or a glance at the sun lights on house walls
and in trees. Anna E. Fortifying it, as they would see in such moments
a mystery that is as fragile as ineffable. It sees it, but you can
not describe it. And so it would seem as if it were an experience
that is only in perception, but does not in my mind. Where the words
and speech have come to their limits, there is still the language
of images. The "unspeakable, it shows," said the philosopher
Wittgenstein. Said Anna E. Strengthening is for 40 years with the
camera the pictures on the track, where the middle is felt in the
banality of human life, that human life is not a bit banal. That it
makes the experience especially in places where the simple life at
home, is already a substantive statement. In the face of the little
boy wearing the colors of his favorite football club, recognizes Anna
E. Strengthening the whole joy and confidence in life. Men and women
in the pub again talk about their faces and postures of the moments
in which the harshness of life changes in the ease of existence. The
formal beauty of the colors on fences makes the law of change visible,
extending not only to practical everyday functions, but also in aesthetic
experiences. Poetry and romance are in the concept of documentary
photography by Anna E. Strengthening extremely close together. Romance
is in bringing those yearning to express the poet Hölderlin once
brought in a short sentence:. "To be one with all that lives."
The photos, Anna E. Strengthening made in Liverpool, tell of this
desire. They show the poetry of everyday life, as the laughter and
tears, exhaustion and thoughts lostness comes to human faces expressed.
And they show that little things make up life, and that the subtle
differences of our existence depend not only from the fact that they
are there, but that they noticed.
That poetry arises from the smallest trifles, also know Susan Leask.
What does the graphic presents, for years living in Liverpool Scottish
in the studio by the Cologne artist Anna E. Strengthening. Not the
individual picture, but the artistic transformation of entire rooms
determined their artistic work. The lake in a Liverpool park she poeticized
picturesque with red artificial flowers. In an old bunker, she created
with coal dust and milky light a cave "uncanny stealth".
And with paper rolls and other visual elements they changed in a confined
space, the views and feelings of familiarity. Always the transformation
of the real space is in a room dreamed her artistic theme. Recently,
in the form of interviews and photo searches were added artistic research
on his own family history. Thus, in the memory of her art resonates
in their family origins of the Scottish Shetland Islands, as well
as their growing up in the working class city of Glasgow. The many
visits with her grandparents on the Shetland Islands have their sense
of the beauty of nature has been impressed and for all in their experience.
And the substantive presence of urban tightness in Glasgow has sharpened
her sense of the opposition between nature and culture. All art derives
its magic from the revival of memories. Conscious and unconscious
memories. The most touching reach far back into the early childhood.
In this experience, touch the artistic poetry of Susan and Anna Leask
E. starch that comes together in the studio to develop starch.
Atelier Anna E. Strengthening
Volksgartenstraße 14, 50667 Cologne, Tel: 0221-319258 0221-27
and 74,866
20th September to 22 October 2012
Opening with English and Irish music played by pianist Thomas Weber:
20.9., 19 clock
Open: Tue-Fri 15-18 Clock, Sun 14-18 clock