JOHANNA JAEGER – liquid_liquid/liquid_solid

It is Jaeger's sixth solo exhibition at SCHWARZ CONTEMPORARY and is presented as part of this year's European Month of Photography.


In her ongoing series liquid_liquid/liquid_solid, Johanna Jaeger photographically explores various states of transition. Presented in pairs, the first image of each diptych (left) shows the ephemeral moment of ink dispersing in water. The second image (right) shows a changed state of the same motif after the ink and water have dried. This process extends over two to four weeks, during which the position of the camera remains unchanged. In the second picture, appearance, composition and physical state are no longer the same and refer to the transformative power of time.

Johanna Jaeger says of her work: ‘When you look at my work, it's certainly not the first thing you think about, but one of the main reasons I use photography is the medium's inherent connection to “reality”. In my conceptual work, which is visually very painterly, this connection is no longer obvious, but it still influences the way the work is received. Questions arise about the dimensionality or materiality of what is depicted that would not exist if these works were painted and completely fictitious. The qualities of photography that lead to an alienation of what is captured, such as the flattening of spatiality, the freezing of time or the alteration of dimensionality, attract me and offer a wide range of possibilities for negotiating questions of perception.

In the final step of her conceptual process, the artist once again puts the viewer's perception to the test: by digitally inverting the images shortly before printing, she leaves the previously factual path of conscious observation and recording and reveals what she calls a ‘surprise image’. An image that she could neither see nor anticipate beforehand.

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SCHWARZ CONTEMPORARY c/o Ria Torstraße 170, 10115 Berlin
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