The Other in Focus

Photographies of Kathrin Ahlt at Neue Galerie im Höhmannhaus

In „The Canon SHOT SeVo“ an impressive three-master pulls over a white-grey nebula sea, in the background decorated by small dinghies, which are spreaded on the water as if just a decoration of the surface. How the picture's name "Canon SHOT SeVo" lets be reminiscent, the 58,3 x 70,8 inch photography is a classical, chromogene color print behind plexiglass, a work of art in a modern medium of technical reproduction.

This in a way poetical reference gives a competition to the impressionistic painting evidence, whereby with sea-pieces one naturally thinks of J.A. McNeill Whistler or Claude Monet. In comparison with their coincidence-stressed choice of motives, for which the straight movements of wind and weather formed the foundation, the photography of Kathrin Ahlt is purposefully styled to show a decorative object, even if this becomes dematerialized again by the technical conversion of the photographic admission, that assimilates the three-master's own reflection on the nearly unnaturally smooth water surface.

The technical instrument of such alienations in the large sized works is not the admission but the aperture setting and the temperature choice within the picture's development, by which Ahlt produces a softening or smudge (comparable to the digital techniques of "softening" or "blur") of the image plane. The admission „The Canon SHOT SeVo“ supplements the dissociation from the natural impression through streamlining, together with an elevated perspective of the photographer, as from a coastal rock.

Ahlt sees her relationship to the photographical object explicitly as voyeuristic.

But the picture separates from her observation and becomes a closed work, excluding the viewer, who participates only by the visible perspective or local positioning of the photographer in the material environment of the picture's object.

Ahlts photographies are related to the category of genre painting, and as to confirm this, the artist agrees to be comparable with John Constables landscape painting. In its technical perfection of the view guidance through parallels to principles of landscape garden architecture, a schematizing of representing nature can be discovered, which mixes the concrete and individual motive with the time-typical theory of the aesthetics of natural beauty.

However strange, today this attitude seems again historical,“ judged Carsten Probst recently in the online version of Deutschlandfunk in his report about the large retrospective of the photographer Thomas Ruff. The loss of the authentic, with Ruff developes more strangely in the series „Nudes “(2001-2005) by a deconstructive digital treatment of pornographic pictures from the Internet, whereas Ahlt strengthens this loss of authenticity more by the control of the picture's object and its transfiguration into an pictorial idea.

Deer (2006) Photographed in the exhibition at Höhmannhaus.

Night AuBu (2006) Photographed in the exhibition at Höhmannhaus.

Accordingly the artist, asked about her paradigms in art history, appoints with Frits Van the Berghe exactly the Belgian Luminist, who focused between Neoimpressionism, Expressionism and Surrealismus on a painting with very individual

themes and phantasies, sometimes very strange and deformative. Ahlt takes imaginations and a kind of psychological fade-out of the photographed object as important contentwise topic of its photographies. The autonomy of the photography's location is evoked by cutouts and framings, as the curator Thomas Elsen interprets in the exhibition catalogue: „an own area of conflict, which lets us notice the seeing like a thriller in a darkened cinema. The “photographically painted” desertion and lonesomeness in Kathrin Ahlts photographies obtain a strong feeling „of the being alone there“ and with it, in the long run, an existential feeling about the own location in the world “.

In pictures like „Mahr CaDr “(100 x 130 cm, 2007), „Deer “or „Nacht AuBu “, which shows night photographs in greek and cypriotic cities, the objects lose by their touristic or safety-lightening and the photographic rework their outlines and their identification. The associative power of the image spaces develops the motivs into the linguistic sphere, not only by the specific visual treatment of the motives but also by a transmission of the concept "motive". The image space alludes to a thriller, because the deformation of the visual motives reminds the viewer of the incalculability of motives in the psychological sense. This dynamics of a transition of the visual term „motive“ to the psychological semantic sphere, is encouraged by the fact, that in the city scenes motives are selected, which are connected with persons and emotions: flags, sedans, walls and frequently hotels and their Swimming pools. The uncertainty and blur of the motives as strengthened by cultural Topoi as "the own" and "the foreign", fill the quasi anonymised area of the photographies and give semantical power to the irritation of the aesthetic and psychological concepts.

The very beautiful catalogue of the exhibition presents for the first time 33 different photographies from the years 2005 to 2007 in large size, some of them double-sided illustrations, and two essays about Ahlt's art written by Thomas Elsen and Rudolf Scheutle. In the exhibition visitors will find a text of the Co-curator Simone Kimmel.

Report and photos of the exhibition: Ulrike Ritter

Shown photo art © Kathrin Ahlt and Kunstsammlungen und Museen Augsburg

Catalogue data:

Kathrin Ahlt. TMP. 36,0. Exhibition catalog. New gallery in the Höhmannhaus. 23. August until 28 October 2007. Damage publishing house 2007. 64 sides. 36 color charts. ISBN 3-932187-59-8. Provisional price after information of the Neue Galerie im Höhmannhaus: 15, - Euro.

Exhibition data:

Kathrin Ahlt

TMP. 36,0

Neue Galerie im Höhmannhaus

Maximilianstrasse 48

86150 Augsburg

Tel. 0821 3244102

kunstsammlungen.stadt@augsburg.de

Opening times: Di 10.00 - 20.00, Mi-Sun 10.00 - 17.00

Exhibition duration 23rd August until 28th October 2007