The photographs of Köhles Schuppen are for me both a nucleus and a conceptual alternative to the staged objects in my oeuvre.
In the shed pictures, there is a different order, a different light, and a different atmosphere.
Immersing myself in a different place that is not my studio, and where I don’t choose the things, but rather just come upon them, where somebody else has taken on the “arrangement” of the objects, fascinates me a great deal. It is a different kind of seeing, a different kind of perception that becomes available.
Of course, I get very close to the person who has set up his workshop here, through the things that have been in his hands and which he will take up again with his hands. However, in this work the focus is not on a singular, unmistakable individual human being, but rather on the universal action that is manifested in these things. It is a workshop, these are tools. With these tools, Köhle builds and repairs, and we build and repair, our world. We take something into our hand, we do something with these tools, and we leave traces behind. With them, and through them, we come into the world. We invent und use these tools in order to find our place in it.
But this is not just true for the tools, but for all things that humans invent and produce. Musical instruments, clothes, food, medicine, toys, jewelry, pictures, etc… They speak of the needs of our existence. The tools, however, were in the world before these other things, just as the hand axe (as far as we know) existed before all other tools.
Furthermore, here the connection between hand and eye becomes so clear, so tangible, and the results of this connection can be so easily imagined, a connection that we seem to lose more and more as we increasingly disperse into digital universes.
