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JOCHEN LEMPERT
Foraging gulls indicate the height of flying insects, 2005.
Courtesy of the artist and galery ProjecteSD, Barcelona.
DÓRA MAURER
The principle of perpetual motion lies at the heart of
Dóra Maurer's approach. Some of her works can be
read in one direction or the other and the repetition,
folding, loops or spirals involved, indicate reversal
processes in line with the principles of engraving.
In the late 1960s, she added photography and film
to her activities, both as documentary vestiges and
also as autonomous sequences of basic gestures such
as walking, turning the head, or shaking hands. In
her film Timing (1973/1980), Maurer folds a piece of
white linen that is in proportion to the dimensions
of the image as well as the span of her arms. As the
folding proceeds, the cloth disappears to reveal a dark
background. In the video Proportions (1979) it is, as it
were, her own body that she folds. After measuring
out her own height on a strip of paper, she folds it
over and divides it into halves and then quarters. In
a strange choreography she treads on it, rests her
elbows on it, and then kisses it. The measuring scale's
abstract calibrations no longer seem to correspond
to the original, nor to any hidden yardstick. The
subversive nature of this anthropometric endeavour
flies in the face of standardization.
H. M. tr. J. H.
Born in 1937 in Budapest (Hungary) where she lives
and works.
Les Prairies's artists
With his background as an ornithologist on research
vessels in the North Sea, Jochen Lempert brings a trained
scientific eye to his photographic subjects. This does not,
however, prevent him from injecting them with a fair dose
of wide-eyed humour or melancholy. Lempert develops
his own black and white prints, which he invariably
leaves unframed. Their disarming simplicity makes them
objects in their own right, leading him occasionally to
complicate their status as images by making it impossible
to decide whether they are figurative or abstractions. The
sheer variety of work displayed here gives us an insight
into Lempert's style. Stadtstrukturen, which represents a
couple of pigeons poking about in a deserted town centre,
is an ironic parody of anthropomorphism. Fly shows a
single fly in sharp focus against a blurred hedge. It is as
if Lempert had frozen this most banal of insects in full
flight in order to contemplate the miracle of life. Consider
also the very recent Untitled (Hoopoe, Delhi): a single
Hoopoe is escaping shyly into the grainy, grey-white that
covers almost the entire surface of the photograph. The
tremendous pathos of this photo comes from the bird's
obvious need to get away, which seems as urgent as, in
the end, it is incomprehensible.
C. S. tr. J.H.
Born in 1958 in Moers (Germany), lives and works in
Hambourg (Germany).
Proportions, 1979. Production Hedendaagse Kunst, Utrecht.
Courtesy of the artist.
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