Spiegel und Licht by Edin Bajrić works with the inversion of narcissistic self-reflection. The mirror here serves as a protective shield behind which the ‘naked self’ is hiding; the reflection area however is turned towards the observer. As a counterpart, the photographic work Licht plays with the topics of seduction and holy light/gloriole.

In her work nylon#acrylic mirror Julia Schewalie implements the terms reflection and appearance in a material picture. It absorbs the artificial as well as the natural light of the room, through reflections converting it into light drawings which continously move along when one changes the viewing angle. The play with perception is one of the central themes of the artist who works specifically with optical illusions. With her works she wants to challenge the bindingness of visibility.

In the installation Vor und hinter der Zeit – Zeitbilder und Zeiträume (Before and behind time – time documents and time spaces), documentary pictures of various periods in the same historical place’s history are merged. Starting point are the documentary images and texts of a showcase of the memorial Zeichen der Erinnerung in Stuttgart. They show deportees from a camp who were transported to Riga in 1941. The artist uses the reflection of the showcases’ glass surfaces to transport the theme. The simultaneously translucent and reflective material glass interweaves past and present images on one pictorial level, fusioning the recorded moment of the present – houses, rails, ambling women – with people from the past, thus creating a new, joint ‘space of time’.

In his sub-series GESCHICHTSTRÄCHTIGE RÄUME (history-fraught rooms) Michael H. Rohde investigates the living and working rooms of historical persons from art and science. A view from below, as if one were looking through the ceiling, partition walls and furniture floating in the room without a floor, seen from the underside. The apparent photographic ‘shot’ suggest a geometrically possible perspective. At the same time, on is irritated by individual elements which are slightly displaced, rotated, tilted, or begin to sway due to ill-matched lighting. The interplay of the former residents’ (Einstein and Nietzsche) spiritual heritage and their living environment depicted here opens up wide-spread associative relations.

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist known for his works in Loop Quantum Gravity. Apart from this, he has long been working on a relational view of quantum mechanics.

“I suggest that the common unease with taking quantum mechanics as a fundamental description of nature (the “measurement problem”) could derive from the use of an incorrect notion, as the unease with the Lorentz transformations before Einstein derived from the notion of observer-independent time. I suggest that this incorrect notion is the notion of observer-independent state of a system (or observer-independent values of physical quantities). I reformulate the problem of the “interpretation of quantum mechanics” as the problem of deriving the formalism from a few simple physical postulates.” C.R.

The neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese is one of the discoverers of the mirror effect (mirror neurons) and has extensively elaborated the phenomenon of mirroring in his model “Embodied Simulation”. Gallese and other neuroscientists have found out that partly the same action groups in the brain are activated when we actually see something, and when we just imagine it before our inner eye; likewise, when we move in order to act, and when we imagine the action. In this sense, neuroscience can help us to understand that the boundary between so-called reality and our imagination as well as the imaginary worlds of fiction is much less sharp and clear than we believe them to be.
“Vision is a complex experience”, says Gallese, and even when we look at a work of art what we ‘see’ is the result of highly complex interplay involving our body with all its motor potentialities, our senses and emotions, our power of imagination, and our memory with all its experiences.

Marion Luise Buchmann’s work Bewegtes Selbst (Moved Self) refers to the pointed lines in the poem Spiegel: “I see what I know. I recognise what’s know. I remember what’s named”, and adds a counterpoint.

The video plays with the perception of a reflection on a moving surface, the two-dimensional medium of film making it difficult to discern what is actually moving. Leaving aside one’s analytical thoughts, one sees the head and torso of a young woman whose appearance is subject to constant change; one delves into what is ‘actually to be seen’ and is able to let one’s imagination roam freely. For Buchmann “the image reflects another state of being, another life and another story…” that seem to begin under the surface of the water.

David Ender’s falsimile installation Der Spiegel (The Mirror) works with the ambiguity of the mirror object and with the mutual reflection of form and content.
The counterfeit poem Der Spiegel is presented in Christian Morgenstern’s book of poems Palmström. Verlag Bruno Cassirer, Berlin 1917. Page 44 is integrated inconspicuously in the antiquarian book – the printed characters as well as the yellowed, somewhat frayed paper are not easy to distinguish from the rest. The work challenges the mechanisms of name-dropping and appearance, which are prevalent not only in the art scene.

The photo duo in disguise by Christiane Spatt opens up a wide field of association to the observer. One photograph shows a cloth-covered figure in typical portrait pose with a dog on its lap. For the cloth patterns Spatt opted for an animal appeal: black stripes on white like a zebra. The dog, on the other hand, is wearing a fashionable navy-blue scarf with white dots.
On the other photograph one sees a green meadow on which something lies hidden under a green cloth. One cannot recognise what it is. Also, one cannot be sure whether it is a human form, and whether it is still alive …
The motif of disguise offers a multi-layered projection screen hinting at various current issues: the discussion about femal veiling, political controversies, anti-mask laws and attendant restriction of liberty, terrorismus, religious tolerance, women’s rights, and gender topics.

The World Summit by Petra Lottje deals with the traditional role allocation between man and woman with whose validity women today are confronted.
Lottje often works with quotations, whether by well-known people or out of her social environment, putting them into another context.
This video installation consists of excerpts from an interview in which Meryl Streep talks about moneymaking in film businnes and about the differences between men and women. The World Summit thematises the role allocation one is confronted with from childhood onwards: which areas, feelings, games, and roles are more promising and easier to conquer for girls and for boys, and later shape our social reality.
Through its presentation in an old golden frame, the video work appears in three perspectives representing different ages: the framed female nude in classical style, the hotel room in 2015 with the artist, as well as the installation’s current presentation in the exhibition space. The exhibition’s visitors thus represent the current link of the chain of tradition.

The performance and installation How to disappear by Veruschka Bohn puts reflection and self-expression in a spatial and interactive context.
The installation only becomes visible through interaction with the viewer. In her performance, the artist awaits the visitors in complete darkness, disguised in a mirrored suit. The visitors have flashlights, allowing them to illuminate either the sculptural appearance of the artist, or her photographs on the walls.

Jerzy Olek
Spiked Object, 2008
three-dimensional photo installation, object ø 70 cm

In Spiked Object, Jerzy Oleks combines two- and three-dimensional elements, so that one is unable to recognise what of it really comes from a reflection and what is merely two-dimensional images. The installation shows temporal and spatial stages of an iterative process within an object, thus crystallising different dimensions and ‘times’ in clear, geometrical shapes. The space appears to be fanning out in itself.

Nora Schöpfer
the sculpture and the viewer are one, 2017
OCE-Print on Alu-Dibond, 2 prints, à 25x35 cm, 1/5

Nora Schöpfer deals with the positions and qualities of perception. In her work the sculpture and the viewer are one, she makes the boundaries between viewing positions and perceptive systems become blurred.

Thomas Kemnitz
time-shift, 2018
Experimental documentation, 5:36 min

Time-shift, a video work by Thomas Kemnitz juxtaposes the same place at different times, and by way of this device makes us aware of the history of the former State Lunatic Asylum Teupitz and its unnoticed decay between 2001 and 2017.