Parsing Entanglements

The sheets of paper show traces of painting that served as colour samples for the artist before the paint is applied to the canvas. Christoph Sbr refers to them as the by-products of painting, created without a conscious design. For this exhibition, the artist shows for the first-time work resulting from the working process undergone outside of his studio. One of the paintings that the samples refer to is the picture of “Anne”. It is the portrait of a drowned young woman taken from the Seine in 1900 that showed an unusual smile, not often seen on corpses retrieved from the water. The portrait is shown in the exhibition. Although anonymous, her face, in particularly her facial expression, is part of cultural history. At the beginning of the last century, Anne’s “Totenmaske” became a popular bohemian home accessory in the form of plaster casts and later, in the 1960s, her cast was adopted for the resuscitation manikin used in first aid courses.

Reinhold Zisser looks for empty buildings in Porto. The architectural remnants refer to a specific history, but they are also precarious shells, vessels for contents and needs without a place in a more settled social context. Zisser uses the material surface of these buildings in Porto for monotypes, which he creates directly on location. The monotype is a special printing technique in which only one copy can be printed. Instead of paper or canvas, monotypes are drawn or painted on glass, acrylic or metal plates. The wet paint is then printed directly onto the paper. One part of the painting remains behind, becoming part of the plate, while the other part, after being pressed on the paper, becomes the work to be seen in the exhibition. The artist is interested in the tension of this entanglement: on the one hand, the anonymous street art, the blurred image on glass; on the other hand, the signed gallery print, the monotype. The entanglement of these two entities is created in the moment of their singular contact, their joint emergence. The monotype print is the mirrored image of the “other” half.