The third exhibition of the Galerie Lorenz, ‘tiny, civilized, with tea’ features works of Shoko Maeda (London), Alex Schwander (Frankfurt) und Martin Earle (London). One common element of all works is the position of man geographically, culturally and sociologically… All possibilities of observation are open to the mind.
Shoko Maeda is interested in the moments where the absorption of a space dominates the perception and emotion of the persons concerned. Her work involves the viewer’s imagination, memory, experience, fantasy or desires by inviting them to project themselves into the position of the anonymous person in the photograph. The series “Tiny People” (2006 - ) is Maeda’s most recent work. Playing with scale and distance, these works feature small figures lost in contemplation on mountain tops or on balconies and balustrades and behind windows of tall buildings. Ironically, some of the tiny people – on close inspection – turn out to be photographers themselves.
The photographs of Alex Schwander are concerned with the longing for the unattainable or the long lost paradise. One can’t help thinking that many pictures, which he took in the course of time, had actually been painted, if the fleeting moment had allowed it. What else is there than to comply with this wish and this idea, at least as an attempt. These photographs have some sort of truth. But it cannot be proven. Perhaps some sort of imagined realism. A nostalgic round dance of form and colour in search of a perfect answer to one’s own history. The photographs themselves can be understood as part of the answer.
The video-work of Martin Earle, “West of Shannon”, plays with a paradox: Movement within stillness, following a quotation by T.S. Eliot: “old men ought to be explorers/ we must be still/ and still moving”. The photographs are from an inhospitable island off the west coast of Ireland, on which a group of hermits once lived. The natural restriction of movement conforms with a life of contemplation – a journey without moving.