Artist: Stefan Burger
Exhibition title: Baden-Baden
Venue: KIRCHGASSE, Steckborn, Switzerland
Date: February 1 – April 4, 2020
Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and KIRCHGASSE, Steckborn
A lens enables the concentration and dispersion of light, as well as the creation of a momentary photographic reality. Light, as the multi-part reflection of light, that finds its way into clusters through openings, glass curvatures and polished deepenings. Each of these steps allows for interventions.In his first solo exhibition at Kirchgasse, Stefan Burger presents a doubled installation of new glass objects. The fleeting moment is inscribed in the light sources transfigured by a photographic past. During their formation, radiant and in constant rotation, in their flowing movements they seem to evade a determination.The lens obtains a volume, becomes a receptacle or even a kind of cloakroom for glasses’ frames without lenses and glasses that twist into the shape of pretzels. The objects are inspired by Krautstruncks, medieval drinking beakers embellished with prunts or nubs, which gave the drinker a surer grip. Defiantly, against gravity, they offer themselves to the hand so as not to slip out of it. In addition, the surfaces of the objects are applied with forms that open up a spectrum between amorphous volumes and symbols.The presentation of a film award is also a brief moment, in whose light a grasping gesture is an integral part. As a place for assorted meanings, the ambivalence of such prizes crystallizes in its breaking and bonding points. The film award for “An Extraordinary Visit” in Baden-Baden, in bygone opulent glamour, where differences in the indicated symmetries of duplications become visible.Stefan Burger explores analog photography techniques in diverse ways. For his solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bern (2017), he transformed plants into auratic pictorial surfaces.
