In her second exhibition at Galerie Thomas Fischer Laetitia Gendre is showing a hand-drawn, photographed and printed film poster, a low wall made of (fake) concrete blocks, footage of an industrial machine breaking down, stills from imaginary films, and the outlines of Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas like so many clues in a paper chase where the smallest common denominator would appear to be forgery and paper.

“In her, I can see the woman that passes in front of my eyes, I can see the model, sometimes the woman I love, and at other times the shape of the woman inside me. I feel that it is my duty to keep on photographing the woman who has so many meanings for me. By facing her, by photographing her, and then by seeing her in the photographs, it is like seeing myself at the same time, discovering myself.” So writes the Japanese, Graz-based photographer Seiichi Furuya about the thousands of portraits of Christine Gößler that he took over the course of seven years. In his second show with the gallery, Furuya shows a selection of these images alongside his series “Staatsgrenze” (State Border), photos taken from 1981 to 1983 at the Austrian border to the former states of the Eastern Block. While the media focus at the time remained on the border inside Germany and the separation of Berlin, Furuya was looking for images in the more inconspicuous, sometimes even idyllic borderlands around Hungary, Yugoslavia and the Czech Republic. His connection of places and their stories is an impressive and rare document, shaped by the counter-play between private and political, between personal gaze and documentary distance.

Sebastian Stumpf is an actor without an audience. His actions in urban space are recorded by a still or video camera and often remain unnoticed by passersby. In a new video projection, the artist’s body is stationary, occupying spaces as temporary and unforeseen as his interventions.
The exhibition also presents documentation of site-specific works from the series “Leaving White Spaces”, ongoing since 2004 and produced for various galleries, museums and collections.

With their matte surfaces, gray scales and unclear motifs, the black-and- white photographs of the Belgian artist Dirk Braeckman (born in 1958) are utterly enigmatic. Working on the boundaries of the medium of photography, they combine fleetingness and substance, texture and distance. The pictures don’t tell stories, though one might be tempted to think so. Leaving the moment in which the image was captured behind, each work reveals the diffuse process behind its own creation.
Several of the new works featured at the exhibition in the Galerie Thomas Fischer were made for Dirk Braeckman’s recent show at de Appel arts center in Amsterdam. Included is also a recent film by the artist.