Kerstin Flake /
Benoît Grimbert
Duo show curated by Michael Mauracher & Peter Schreiner, Fotohof,
Salzburg, 2024
With the support of Institut Français
Exhibition views: Andrew Phelps/Fotohof
The exhibition “Kerstin Flake / Benoît Grimbert”, brings together
two international positions whose intellectual affinity is perhaps only
apparent at second glance. Kerstin Flake stages bizarre plays as
director and stage designer in one person. While the laws of physics
only seem to apply to a limited extent in her picture series, Benoît
Grimbert’s precise photographs resemble an almost archaeological
investigation of urban spaces. In his works, he forges links between the
places depicted and the biographies of iconic personalities such as Ian
Curtis, Nico, Jim Morrison and Charles Manson, thus confusing temporal
layers. The result is a conglomerate of pop culture myths and the
history of photography, which seems to evoke inner images and at the
same time deconstruct them. […]
Benoît Grimbert […] focuses on urban
scenes as stages for multi-layered historical processes and narratives.
By means of precisely composed, documentary-like photographs, he not
only conducts a precise, visual investigation of built spaces and
landscapes in his works, but also embarks on a search for clues that is
as metaphysical as it is criminalistic. In his most recent work, “Horse
Latitudes” (2014-2023), Jim Morrison’s and Charles Manson’s legendarily
linked biographies become the pivotal points of a narrative about a
not-too-distant but highly mythical past that blends the results of his
photographic explorations with historical text fragments and
pop-cultural artifacts. The images that feed this narrative meander
somewhere between documentary fact and spiritualist ghost photography.
They show crime scenes whose dead have long since disappeared into the
Hades of pop-cultural mythology and make use of a photographic language
whose references are probably as iconic as the legendary protagonists
that Benoît Grimbert seeks to approach artistically.
Exhibitions
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