Juergen Staack - ABERRATION EROSION V1S10N: Munich

Juergen Staack is a German minimal art and conceptual artist based in Düsseldorf. Staack developed his own forms of expression in conceptual photography quite early on, focusing on the translatability of photography into language and the material fragility of the analog and digital photographic image in its fleetingness. To do so, he uses a wide variety of media, such as performance, sound, video, sculpture, and photography. Staack questions our perception in all areas and explores the boundaries of image production anew. Coincidence is important in Staack's works; the unknown, changing processes are important stylistic devices in his experimental photography.

Central to the space of our exhibition ABERRATION EROSION V1S10N is a pedestal with a colorful landscape photograph, which on closer inspection is made of fine quartz sand: it shows the demilitarized, guarded zone between North and South Korea. Sound vibration dissolves the fine quartz sand and causes the borders to blend into one another.

An early series of works Transcription Image from 2008 shows Polaroids which are accompanied by spoken texts that are beyond our comprehension. They are the spoken descriptions of the photographs, spoken by people who speak rare languages on the verge of extinction. We do not see the image that they describe, because it was repainted by them after the description. The subject is not recognizable to the viewer, as is the language, which, like the image, can no longer be understood and dissolves.

In his series of works Tableaux, Staack uses old glass negatives that were used by photographers before the paper and celluloid negatives. They are placed on light-sensitive, thin poplar wood and exposed to natural sunlight for an extended period of time. The effect is astonishing, the selected portraits become visible in delicate nuances and the depicted persons appear in fragile contours. As if from the past, they emerge and tell of their lives. With time, these appearances will fade again, as will the memories of them. In Addition, his impressive works from the Aberration-M2 series, which visualize the Moiré effect by means of fabric and light panels, are on display, amongst others. The moiré, this overlay of structures, which must be avoided as an error and deviation in photography, is transformed into a unique aesthetic in this series.