»Verwobener Raum« (Interwoven Space) is the title of the exhibition of current works by the Berlin photographers Sabine Wild and Stefanos Pavlakis. Both show analog, manipulated color photography, because they have subjected their own photo material to manual post-processing: Sabine Wild uses photos of apartment blocks in Chinese megacities; she printed these out in duplicate, precisely cut them into strips and then assembled them in a process reminiscent of weaving. The result is nested, serially repeated and image-filling architectural views with countless details. The result is images of living batteries for people that, compared to the actual high-rise blocks in Hong Kong or Chongqing, take on a fantastically unreal character through the artistic intervention. Thus, the actually existing prefabricated buildings intended for masses of the population are artistically transferred to an almost absurdly gigantic dimension through the method of precise montage used by Sabine Wild and thus declared to be science fiction of the ambivalent kind: Accordingly, the city vedutas appear as if they have fallen out of time, absolutely and totally inhuman. These works create a form of criticism that does not behave as bossy and omniscient, but confronts the viewer and encourages them to take a stance themselves.

Stefanos Pavlakis shows image montages that were created using a completely different process. His photos, details and excerpts originally showed everything possible… a view of a garden, demolished blinds, the interior of a train or reflections of modern architecture in mirrors – Stefanos Pavlakis tore his photo prints to shreds in order to recombine them. The joining together, i.e. the image montage in the thought of shapes, colors and material to create a coherent composition plays the central role: aspects of the formal abstract are to be combined with those of emotional sensuality, so that an exciting, at the same time real as well as poetic imagery can come true. In the collages, spatiality is no longer created in the sense of front and back. The tear through the subject shows not only the white paper on which the print was made, but also the simultaneity of completely distant events at a new point in the picture. In these montages there are moments of beauty as well as the brutally unexpected. Stefanos Pavlaki’s compositions are chaotic, and yet they are calm depictions. As works of art, they are a contradiction in terms to the flood of images in the media, which knows no quiet moments and hardly ever captures anything in the long term.

Peter Funken, April 2022
(English translation by PiB)

May 6 — June 3, 2022
Opening Reception: Friday, May 6, 6 – 9 pm
Finissage: Friday, June 3, 6 – 9 pm

ep.contemporary

Pohlstraße 71 · 10785 Berlin
[District: Tiergarten | Borough: Mitte]

Opening hours: Thu & Fri 3 – 6:30 pm, Sat 2 – 6 pm

Admission free