Soy Capitan

Invited by Melissa Canbaz

Rochade*

A plinth is not a frame. And a photograph is just as much, or as little, a picture, as an armchair is a chair. A plinth, unlike a frame, is anchorage, not seclusion; a plinth is foundation, not window. A photograph is the plinth beneath the images, and an armchair is a chair that stands by itself. And it is what you rely on when you let yourself sink into it.

Rochade: a twofold movement, shifting against each other.

Lisa Herfeldt’s sculptures, shown on the wall, draw on a background that is not necessarily obvious at first glance. The plain wicker structures, simply titled Figur, are all components and elements of a particular rattan chair model, the so-called Peacock Chair. The large, sweeping back of the chair provides as much cover as it frames. For her sculptures, however, Herfeldt does not use material from the signature backrest, but from the foot of the chair, its “plinth” . You don’t realize it if you don’t know it. The objects can also do without this context. In which case they appear as wall objects that already pack their own frame. Initiated, undone, abstracted and released.

Rochade: A transposition that uncloses.

The photographs presented by Kristin Loschert are placed in stacks on structures that alternate between a table, an open display cabinet and a plinth. They show young men, strangers whom Loschert had approached on the street. Men she doesn’t know, but who agreed to be photographed by her. A brief encounter, a photo shoot, several takes of a portrait, one stack per person. What you see is (sometimes at least) this: the back of the head (or something like that), an elbow (or something like that), a look, outdoors, indoors, a glance, a body, a black-and-white copy, a color copy, barite, a C-Print, another glance, white border, borderless. A fragmented approach, open-ended, unclosed, playing through variations of the image. A fraying, escalating practice. Presentation: open, permeable.

Rochade: To gain breathing space. Nothing works. Everything is working. It is a lie to say that solidity holds up.

Dominikus Müller
(translated by Lian Rangkuty)

* castling

Lisa Herfeldt lives and works in Berlin. A selection of her solo exhibitions is social slush, Between Bridges, Berlin (2019), Dream Home Heartache, Kjubh, Köln (2017) and Bodybuilding, and Niklas Schechinger, Berlin (2019). Group exhibitions include Super Erotic Group Show, 8. Salon, Hamburg (2019), Xanadu, Palais für aktuelle Kunst, Glückstadt (2015). Together with Anne-Katrin Ahrens and Sarah Bohn she is part of Insti, a working-, exhibition, and event space at Kotti, where other artists are invited to collaborate on exhibitions and events.

Kristin Loschert lives and works in Berlin. Solo exhibitions include Boxer, Vacant, Tokyo (2016), Boxer, Galerie für moderne Fotografie, Berlin (2013), and group shows Admit One, Angela Mewes, Berlin (2018), as well as Riemenschneider in Situ, Conference Riemenschneider in Situ, Rothenburg o.d.T., in collaboration with Heinz Peter Knes (2017), ich, du, er/sie/es, Kunstverein Leipzig (2016) and Les chroniques purple, Vacant, Tokyo (2014).

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