| | | |  | | | | © Donata Wenders 'Leiko Dreaming' 2017 | | | | | MAGIC OF SILENCE | | | | | | | 23 February – 29 May, 2019 | | | | Opening: Saturday, 23 February, 12-4pm | | |  | | | | | | | | | |  | | | | © Robert Lebeck, Herbert Karajan, St. Moritz 1969 / Courtesy Johanna Breede PHOTOKUNST | | | | | | It is the year 1969: In the French Church of St. Moritz, Herbert von Karajan, then Chief Conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, conducts Arthur Honegger's Symphony no. 2. The exact circumstances of the concert are not known. The only thing that remains is the silence. Robert Lebeck has sculpted them on a minimalist composition of light and shadow. But each before and after is cut off: only the genius and the great silence; the moment between two sentences, between two bars or two notes. The moment when nothing happens - the second of all possibilities. Everything can grow out of this - a small sonnet, a symphonic movement. The French philosopher Simone Weil has once said about such a magical moment in music that it gives utmost intensity to the moment of silence.
Moments of silence: On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the gallery, Johanna Breede has put together a group exhibition that wants to celebrate those mysterious moments in which nothing happens, because maybe everything is already there. Every religion has described these magical moments, and at all times people sought to attain them: "Silence, that you may know," says the gnostic writings of Nag Hammadi; and Aurobindo Ghose, spiritual master from Hindu India, once spoke of "divine love of the deepest silence". | | | | | |  | | | | ©️ Max Scheler 'Alfred Hitchcock in a Cafe on the Reeperbahn; Hamburg 1963 / Courtesy Johanna Breede PHOTOKUNST | | | | | | But there is also another silence: one that pushes and pinches, and that rips inside us. The loneliness of modern man. Many post-war photographers, in particular, have dealt with this extreme of existence; such as the Hamburg photo journalist Max Scheler, when he portrayed director Alfred Hitchcock through a large windowpane in 1963. The result was a symbolic image of existential uprooting. A wall has slid in between me and the world, remaining unbridgeable, hard to bear.
Sometimes, however, such a tearing situation can be released into a moment of transcendental experience. It is such mystical border crossings that Barbara Klemm probably had in mind when she achieved a small, seemingly unspectacular black and white shot in 2018: out of the darkness, she and the viewer together look down a tree-covered forest path. But from the end, they are met by a white light; mysterious, and almost like that unfathomable hunch that Hieronymus Bosch has immortalized on his great painting "Rise of the Blessed". | | | | | |  | | | | © Isa Marcelli 'Le poisson qui marche', 2016 | | | | | | But not always comes the silence and quiet so obvious. Rather, ordinary silence extends right through the daily routine. The photographers René Groebli, Donata Wenders and Karin Székessy, for example, are concerned in their pictures with the peculiar experience of human beings witnessing a moment of supreme beauty - for example, when a body holds the balance between suspense and calm; in the graceful silence that seems so proud and stoic like a statue of Michelangelo.
Quite different, in turn, is the resonance between man and nature that touches on the depths of existence. Jens Knigge has found such a mysterious resonance room - not in the religious or sacred, but in the middle of a snow-covered country road in the Scandinavian loneliness. Knigge's series "Nothern Roads" gives an idea of how what some may call a soul is related to nature and landscape. In almost sublime wordlessness here inside and outside begin to communicate. An image like this lets the viewer sink back into the great existence - back to that mysterious place, where ultimately all the photographic images of this anniversary exhibition are rooted.
Text: Ralf Hanselle | | | | | |  | | | | © Kuichiro Kurita 'Fall', 1991 / Courtesy Johanna Breede PHOTOKUNST | | | | | | unsubscribe here
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© 19 Feb 2019 photo-index UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
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