Bernhard Kahrmann
Wurttembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany
Bernhard Kahrmann’s exhibitions revolve around vague locations and concrete moments. Or, conversely, fixed situations and fleeting perceptions. Being there, but not being there. The projects in which he has participated had names such as ‘right here – right now’ (Stuttgart, 1999) or ‘home and away’ (Berlin, 2000) and here, in Stuttgart, his own ‘Somewhere – Not Here’.
This was Kahrmann’s first major solo show at an art institution, and the floating ambivalence of the title is matched by his approach to artistic means and genres, be it sound or painting, film, photography or installation. The centrepiece of the presentation was the domed hall of the building, which he transformed into a multimedia theatre of light. The musical score for this production, in which film, text fragments, colour projections, letters and other symbols flow into one another, was anticipated to some extent in one of the acrylic paintings on display in an adjacent smaller room. Where Love Can Be (2004) depicts a foreshortened red ring surrounded by spherical bodies freely distributed across the picture like stars, supernovas or other cosmic phenomena. The background recalls a map, but as soon as you attempt to identify the geographical features, it becomes clear that these are just fields in the colours grey, black and caput mortuum. This is Kahrmann’s modus operandi: he generates a state of sleek accessibility at the same time as depriving the apparently simple process of understanding of its basis. One thing seems to join seamlessly with the next, in perfect harmony – but then the red ring is not intact; love can be and cannot be.
In the same way Somewhere – Not Here (2004), the main installation in this show, was not set up in a straightforward fashion. Letters tumbled in cascades over semi-transparent screens stretched on large frames, interspersed with scraps of sentences and words: ‘beauty’, ‘looking’, ‘excitement’, ‘strange’.
Michael Hubi
Translated by Nicholas Grindell
