An exhibition of recent works by Christoffer Joergensen
The idea of creating a new picture by uniting or juxtaposing two different photographs forms the basis of the show. The two combined photos should alienate each other just enough to create a space in which the observers’ imagination can be triggered. Confronted with a series of fragments – of crowds, of nature, of the world -, they are encouraged to go on a hunt for explanations.
In the work Die Vereinigung (The Unification) two photographic prints, one of a carnival crowd and the other of ice hockey players, are manually cut into thin strips and then woven together to form a coherent yet also unsettling composition. In the recent video work News Invasion, pictures of violent events have been digitally combined with photos of news anchors in their studio. In the resulting pictures, the newsrooms look as though the reported events had taken place inside them. The violence is leaking into the neutral space of the media.
As an attempt to close the gap between the newsroom and the news event, News Invasion is a claustrophobic work. But the exhibition also goes in the opposite direction. While appearing dense at first glance, the pictures in this show attempt to create new mental spaces, new room for us to breathe in. The processes and techniques employed to create them are meant, in a sense, to wrestle down the obtrusive nature of the photograph, its brute factuality, in order to give the viewer more freedom to imagine.
