Living with Ghosts
Schloss Ringenberg, Hamminkeln
23.10.- 11.12.2016
Installation view: Living with ghosts, 2016
Photo: Hye-Mi Kim
Liza Dieckwisch, Ben Greber, Damaris Kerkhoff, Bram Kuypers, Rosalie van Oorschot, Katharina Veerkamp
We surround ourselves daily with objects and they surround us. We live with them, but do they live with us? For the exhibition Living with Ghosts the artists of Schloss Ringenberg have been invited to work in the exhibition spaces in advance. By placing the creative process within the space of the exhibition, their work should reveal the qualities and functionality, but also the limitations of the different types of space.
In Living with Ghosts objects are to be seen as actors in their own right and they are given a certain capability of performativity and communication. The presented artworks invite the spectators as well as their creators to listen to what they might have to say to each other when they meet in the same space.
The exhibition aims to display these confrontations as they cannot be rehearsed beforehand. Just as “You cannot test a spell”, it is unpredictable how the objects as artworks will appear.
Katharina Veerkamp breaks down the light using a big prism that hang in her studio in such a way, that the fragmented speckles of light simulate a three dimensionality. With the help of different techniques, the light fall down on light-sensitive gelatin photographic paper, silk or even directly hit the bare wall of her studio. Her numerous attempts to catch and capture the light, take us back to the basics of how light is absorbed or reflected.
The question of how space is created through light also returns in her sculptures. The dark black PLATZHALTER occupy small niches throughout the exhibition space. The organic looking sculptures are made specifically for hidden places, crawling into in-between crevasses in order to attract and absorb the light. As if they were having a life of their own, they seem to only stop moving the moment they are perceived. Situated in voids or negative spaces, the PLATZHALTER are encountered the most unexpected sites within the exhibition.
Inez Piso / Natalie Keppler