Image and text and what can happen in between
in KAI 10 | Arthena Foundation in Düsseldorf

After an introductory tour of the exhibition, the curators will talk to Markus Vater. The artist, who lives in London and Düsseldorf and teaches at the HBK Essen, encounters his environment with an alert, inquiring eye. He is interested in the hidden, the overlooked in everyday life. In seemingly incidental moments, he discovers the bizarre, the abysmal and the comical. In the 63-part series Objects of Significance, Vater juxtaposes a photograph with a text written by himself. While the photographs are soberly kept in black and white and mostly show people or objects, the texts often describe personal experiences and are infused with subtle, laconic humor. Thus, image and text are always in a tense relationship with each other - a deliberate shift that shows: What we see is not necessarily what is actually meant. The texts give us an insight into the artist's way of thinking, but less so into the images combined with them. Vater's black and white drawings, which are reminiscent of cartoons in their formal language, also follow this principle. Text and image do not relate to each other illustratively - rather, the texts create new, often surprising meanings that only reveal themselves on closer inspection.

Please note: The tour and the subsequent discussion will take place at KAI 10 | Arthena Foundation Kaistraße 10 in 40221 Düsseldorf.
Further information can be found here.