Tobias Spichtig: Pretty Fine

Making what seems close to us appear distant plays a key role

In Spichtig's work, a similar back and forth between attraction and repulsion produces a certain form of iconicity that does not demand devotion. You recognise something in these images, and you seek the proximity of this something, congratulate yourself on the resonance it finds in you, immerse yourself in its cool grungy beat. But the familiarity that plays a role here owes nothing to similarity - to you or your life - but to strangeness. What you recognise is not the content, but the contour; and if it's an experience at all, it's that of non-existence ... It was actually Spichtig who gave me Marlene Dietrich's trick for keeping an audience in line: Who is the one person that everyone knows? - The one who isn't there! "Sing to her," she said. Dietrich and Spichting practise seduction without deception. Or iconicity without idealism, even without ideology. Let me suggest something else: memory without memory? Kristian Vistrup Madsen

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