LINN LÜHN

MARGARETE JAKSCHIK

Somebody changed

November 14, 2019 – January 10, 2020

Often the perfect moment presents itself as something ambivalent. As something that can be felt but cannot be captured in language, and through its description it literally loses the aura out of whose facets it is assembled in our thoughts. And yet it is something tangible that manifests itself in our perceptions and feelings. The perfect moment can be found in many things: in the unnoticed shaking of the plumage of a bird whose feathers almost tangibly overlap in their softness. In the breaking open of an almost threateningly darkened sky, in which the reflections of the sun’s rays promise the feeling of hope. Or in the familiar radiance of a tree whose silhouette appears in the pleasant light of the waning day against the approaching red of dusk. Like the three different views of the same tree, which seem to be interrelated in the same way as the complementary qualities of a character, Margarete Jakschik’s photographs are not created as part of a specific project or in series, but access the poetry of everyday life—like found moments—over the course of an indefinite period of time. Charged with memories of places or people, in their atmospheric colorfulness the ten works on view in Jakschik’s first solo exhibition in Düsseldorf speak softly and almost inaudibly of our relationships to past situations and the experiences found in them. Of moments that are preserved in our thoughts and continually branch out anew with our own associations like an invisible web. Sensitive and multifaceted— similar to the wet strands of hair extending down a child’s back like the soft tentacles of an octopus, reminiscent in their sharp contrast of Karl Blossfeldt’s sensitive plant photographs. Taken in Los Angeles, a city of dreams and constant change, Jakschik’s photographs pause in the documentation of her everyday life and equally direct our gaze on the uncontrived poetry of a landscape that makes America a place of longing, honest and unadorned in the coexistence of its contrasts. To a place that does not exist purely on the basis of artificially projected ideas, but in relation to our memories and emotions offered to it. However, far from a working method that directly aims for attribution or identification of photographic categories, in their form as a depiction Jakschik’s works become portraits. Not in the conventional sense, since her photographs, which in their momentary nature do not always directly focus on the depiction of a person, instead capture the atmosphere of a certain moment. A feeling that is primal and comes from deep within us and connects us with what is depicted. The surreal and comforting absurdity of watching a bear bathing, feeling the cool expanse of an extending valley, and the deep serenity of a walk together, in whose beauty a portrait of Jakschik’s own view on and of things is also depicted. Unburdened by the latest technical advancements of photography and far from all its new possibilities of manipulation, but always with the goal of openly and equally allowing vulnerability, strength, and feeling in the sensitive light of her snapshots.

Philipp Fernandes do Brito

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