Virtual vernissage speech - by Claudine Mariaux
As you walk through this virtual exhibition, the first thing that strikes you is its range. Here hangs a quiet black-and-white photograph of a lakeshore under a dramatic sky of clouds – calm, almost meditative. Next to it, an image made up of nothing more than a tiny object and its impossibly long shadow on a textured wall – almost an exercise in reduction: how little does an image need, to work? And elsewhere again, the canvas seems to explode in color and form, barely recognizable as photography anymore. One might think several different artists were hanging here. But it is a single, current body of work made over just a few months – and that is exactly what makes it so revealing.
The first part of this series stays close to its subject: the flowers and still lifes. The dried flower in a glass vessel in "stillife II," the luminous blue blossom in "reflections in blue," the orange zucchini flower against deep blue fabric in "zucchini I" – and finally, in "zucchini II," a view so close that a single flower becomes an entire sculpture of yellow and cobalt blue. Here, the eye works with proximity, with light, with color contrast – the world is looked at closely, not altered.
And then there is "Lake Öttinger, view from Ardetzenberg Island" – the title already gives it away: invented, assembled. A staircase, a balustrade, a lake beyond, all rendered in heightened, almost unreal saturation. This image sits exactly between the two poles of this series: it looks like landscape photography, but is in fact already a construction. A hinge into the second half of the exhibition.
Because there, photography detaches itself entirely from its starting point. One almost feels as though looking into a kaleidoscope: colors folding, lines mirroring themselves, forms exploding only to gather back into a center the next moment. In "acid #1 (or San Francisco Bay 1968)," colors swirl as though in an (LSD?) trip – the title quotes an entire psychedelic era. "Archangel Gabriel" bursts toward a center in yellow and flaming red – an apparition, pure energy, or blazing vengeance – it stays open. "Frozen Hell" refuses any clarity even in its title, ice and embers at once. And in "Sinus Lift," a medical fragment suddenly flashes in the middle of a swirl of turquoise and red – teeth, almost uncomfortably physical – one is pulled out of pure formal contemplation and can't help but ask: what am I actually looking at here? These images dissolve their source motifs almost to the point of abstraction – while their titles simultaneously hand them back a new, often surprising layer of meaning. You look at pure form and color, and yet are constantly invited to read a story, a feeling, a reference into it.
What holds this series of most recent images together as a whole is precisely this movement: between close observation and radical transformation. Two poles – and a path in between that you can retrace yourself simply by walking through this virtual room.
Little is known about the series "Finally Vanishing in the Mirror" – only the title itself. This series is not a self-contained body of work, but one chapter within a larger, ongoing project titled "necrolog" (Nekrolog is german for "obituary"), in which the artist repeatedly engages with impermanence – so far exclusively through botanical motifs. Though, as anyone who knows him will tell you: that need not stay the case. Early traces of this Nekrolog were already visible in the first series – in that quiet image of the dried flower in the glass vessel.
Here, the theme is played out with full consistency: ten images, one composition. Against deep, absolute black lies a single withered leaf each time – ochre-toned and velvety, curled up, as in "#1"; spread wide in deep reds like a bird in flight, as in "#4"; then again ragged and jagged like a torn feather, as in "#13." Each already visibly bears the marks of time. And beside it, every time, the leaf appears a second time: a pale, blurred shadow, barely more than a memory of its own form. From this second, ghostly leaf, fine golden dust detaches and drifts off to the right, into the darkness. The leaf disintegrates, literally, before our eyes – or perhaps it is just now coming into being; that remains unclear.
The title offers a way to read this: the mirror – that is the second, pale version of each leaf, a double, a reflection of itself that is no longer quite tangible. The vanishing – that is the golden dust, dissolving silently, particles that no longer hold any form. And "finally" – a word that suggests finality, but also something like relief. Not a dramatic rupture, but a quiet, almost tender dissolving.
There is one more special story behind the third and final series tonight. "Power Flowers" is the artist's very first project ever – and is being shown publicly here for the first time. What makes it special: it's a joint work with his wife, who shot the original photographs the flowers are based on. Photographs she herself can now barely recognize.
And you understand why the moment you stand in front of these images. Each flower – a hellebore, an iris, a bee balm blossom, a peony – stands isolated against a rich, almost unreal field of color: deep blue, gold, violet. A quiet plant photograph has become a stage.
And again and again, the same event: petals come loose, swirling away as colored dust – as with the vividly red bee balm blossom, or the peony in image 20. It's the same idea of dissolution we already saw in "Nekrolog" – only here it isn't grey and gold, but explosively colorful. Not a passing away, but more like a joyful scattering, almost a fireworks display.
The titles, too, play games with us: the hazy image of several wilted blossoms, rendered in muted browns, is titled "Saharan Dust" – as though real Saharan dust hung in the air. An iris is called "Lily in the Desert" – names that name a mood, a color, an association, more than they name the plant itself.
And in this, perhaps, lies the most beautiful thought of this series: it took two ways of seeing to bring it into being. One saw the flower as it was. The other transformed it until it became something entirely new – a "Power Flower." So, right at the very beginning of Joseph's work, something already begins that runs through the whole of the show: the act of looking at the world, and the courage to make it new again.
The first part of this series stays close to its subject: the flowers and still lifes. The dried flower in a glass vessel in "stillife II," the luminous blue blossom in "reflections in blue," the orange zucchini flower against deep blue fabric in "zucchini I" – and finally, in "zucchini II," a view so close that a single flower becomes an entire sculpture of yellow and cobalt blue. Here, the eye works with proximity, with light, with color contrast – the world is looked at closely, not altered.
And then there is "Lake Öttinger, view from Ardetzenberg Island" – the title already gives it away: invented, assembled. A staircase, a balustrade, a lake beyond, all rendered in heightened, almost unreal saturation. This image sits exactly between the two poles of this series: it looks like landscape photography, but is in fact already a construction. A hinge into the second half of the exhibition.
Because there, photography detaches itself entirely from its starting point. One almost feels as though looking into a kaleidoscope: colors folding, lines mirroring themselves, forms exploding only to gather back into a center the next moment. In "acid #1 (or San Francisco Bay 1968)," colors swirl as though in an (LSD?) trip – the title quotes an entire psychedelic era. "Archangel Gabriel" bursts toward a center in yellow and flaming red – an apparition, pure energy, or blazing vengeance – it stays open. "Frozen Hell" refuses any clarity even in its title, ice and embers at once. And in "Sinus Lift," a medical fragment suddenly flashes in the middle of a swirl of turquoise and red – teeth, almost uncomfortably physical – one is pulled out of pure formal contemplation and can't help but ask: what am I actually looking at here? These images dissolve their source motifs almost to the point of abstraction – while their titles simultaneously hand them back a new, often surprising layer of meaning. You look at pure form and color, and yet are constantly invited to read a story, a feeling, a reference into it.
What holds this series of most recent images together as a whole is precisely this movement: between close observation and radical transformation. Two poles – and a path in between that you can retrace yourself simply by walking through this virtual room.
Little is known about the series "Finally Vanishing in the Mirror" – only the title itself. This series is not a self-contained body of work, but one chapter within a larger, ongoing project titled "necrolog" (Nekrolog is german for "obituary"), in which the artist repeatedly engages with impermanence – so far exclusively through botanical motifs. Though, as anyone who knows him will tell you: that need not stay the case. Early traces of this Nekrolog were already visible in the first series – in that quiet image of the dried flower in the glass vessel.
Here, the theme is played out with full consistency: ten images, one composition. Against deep, absolute black lies a single withered leaf each time – ochre-toned and velvety, curled up, as in "#1"; spread wide in deep reds like a bird in flight, as in "#4"; then again ragged and jagged like a torn feather, as in "#13." Each already visibly bears the marks of time. And beside it, every time, the leaf appears a second time: a pale, blurred shadow, barely more than a memory of its own form. From this second, ghostly leaf, fine golden dust detaches and drifts off to the right, into the darkness. The leaf disintegrates, literally, before our eyes – or perhaps it is just now coming into being; that remains unclear.
The title offers a way to read this: the mirror – that is the second, pale version of each leaf, a double, a reflection of itself that is no longer quite tangible. The vanishing – that is the golden dust, dissolving silently, particles that no longer hold any form. And "finally" – a word that suggests finality, but also something like relief. Not a dramatic rupture, but a quiet, almost tender dissolving.
There is one more special story behind the third and final series tonight. "Power Flowers" is the artist's very first project ever – and is being shown publicly here for the first time. What makes it special: it's a joint work with his wife, who shot the original photographs the flowers are based on. Photographs she herself can now barely recognize.
And you understand why the moment you stand in front of these images. Each flower – a hellebore, an iris, a bee balm blossom, a peony – stands isolated against a rich, almost unreal field of color: deep blue, gold, violet. A quiet plant photograph has become a stage.
And again and again, the same event: petals come loose, swirling away as colored dust – as with the vividly red bee balm blossom, or the peony in image 20. It's the same idea of dissolution we already saw in "Nekrolog" – only here it isn't grey and gold, but explosively colorful. Not a passing away, but more like a joyful scattering, almost a fireworks display.
The titles, too, play games with us: the hazy image of several wilted blossoms, rendered in muted browns, is titled "Saharan Dust" – as though real Saharan dust hung in the air. An iris is called "Lily in the Desert" – names that name a mood, a color, an association, more than they name the plant itself.
And in this, perhaps, lies the most beautiful thought of this series: it took two ways of seeing to bring it into being. One saw the flower as it was. The other transformed it until it became something entirely new – a "Power Flower." So, right at the very beginning of Joseph's work, something already begins that runs through the whole of the show: the act of looking at the world, and the courage to make it new again.