elke zück­ert ∙ sebas­tian weise ∙ melancolia

The melan­ch­oly has been descri­bed as a frame of mind of being fil­led with sad­ness, a dis­pair of the world. In the visual arts, it mani­fests its­elf as a visua­liza­tion of a pain­ful vision, which is usually direc­ted to some­thing past, be it on the loss or the ina­bi­lity to reach a par­ti­cu­lar human being, be it on the loss of the social and geo­gra­phi­cal environ­ment, eg. of fri­ends and the home­land. The 25 photo works assem­bled in this dup­li­cate exhi­bi­tion by Elke Zück­ert (born 1965) from Augs­burg and Sebas­tian Weise (born 1975) from Sondershausen/Thuringia inves­ti­gate inter­nal forms of a pain­ful vision, give them room to mate­ria­li­sa­tion and guide the viewer into an encryp­ted, very per­so­nal world.

Elke Zück­ert crea­tes images, or rather: image meta­phors for the tran­sitory, the no-longer-being-here by choo­sing spaces and sur­faces that reveal tra­ces of past, lived life, char­ging them with objects of mourning and fare­well. So she arran­ges shoes, a dress or a cru­ci­fix in that ambience like the figu­ra­tive objects of a pain­ting, but with the dif­fe­rence that there is no main cha­rac­ter: that per­son looks as if taken out of the pic­ture and extin­gu­is­hed. Howe­ver, the cru­ci­fix also refers to resur­rec­tion and a new begin­ning, to the over­co­m­ing of hope­l­ess­ness. Elke Zück­ert about her artistic work: “It was a long way to pho­to­gra­phy. With self-doubt, rejec­tion of the camera. My pic­tures are crea­ted in the silence with struggle, lone­liness and power­less­ness. In my life, it was not just about life, but about sur­vi­val. Because of my love for my son, I had no choice but to fight. Pho­to­gra­phy dri­ves me. Ever­y­thing comes alive. What I least wan­ted was now my ful­fill­ment, my inner wealth. My pic­tures are crea­ted in ever­y­day life — with impres­si­ons that move me in my inn­er­most. That’s what dri­ves me to find mate­ri­als for these feelings.“

Sebas­tian Weise descri­bes his series “Two Souls Live …” as fol­lows: “In this series, I deal with my origins and the end­less pos­si­bi­li­ties of life and fate. I use digi­tal col­lage tech­ni­ques to blend images from the Sude­ten­land, home of my ance­s­tors, with pho­to­graphs of my own home­land and pla­ces I’ve tra­ve­led. In doing so, I focu­sed stron­gly on the sur­rea­lists in a tech­ni­cal approach as well as in appearance and com­po­si­tion. The (basic) pic­tures were taken over a period of several years. Some are part of other series, some were wait­ing in the archive of their redis­co­very. Their com­bi­na­tion or fusion brings them into new aes­the­tic and the­ma­tic con­texts. The pro­cess of col­lage was used very intui­tively. The images from the Schlu­ckenau area are in the pro­cess of beco­m­ing, brea­king off, com­ing back. ‘Work in pro­gress’ is a legi­ti­mate descrip­tion. Again and again I will be here and there, again and again I will see new pictures.“