Tobias SpichtigPretty Fine

To make what seems close to us appear distant – that plays a key role, and in Spichtig’s work a similar back and forth between attraction and repulsion, which produces a certain form of iconicity that demands no devotion. One recognises something in these pictures, and one seeks the closeness of that something, congratulates oneself on the resonance it finds in one, immerses oneself in its cool, grungy beat. But the familiarity at play here owes nothing to any similarity – with you or your life – but to strangeness. What one recognises is not the content but the contour; and if it is an experience at all, then it is one of absence … It was in fact Spichtig who let me in on Marlene Dietrich’s trick for keeping an audience hooked: who is the one person everybody knows? – The one who is not there! “Sing to her,” she said. Dietrich and Spichtig practise seduction without deception. Or iconicity without idealism, even without ideology. Let me suggest something else: remembrance without memory?

Exhibition:
Contemporary Fine Arts CFA Berlin, 20/5 – 20/6/2020