Image is colder than death in David Moser’s, “Corpse and Mirror.”
Hellbent on withholding, two screens tentatively kiss their reflections, and as in an oblique mirror stage delivered by the sound of children’s programming, the images are reflected infinitely in black mirrors, consumed, simultaneously reproduced and excavated of their wholesomeness. The madcap trauma loop of Tom and Jerry runs infinitely in the periphery, them berserk doubles always hunting, a toxic relationship which can never end because without each other they would cease to exist. Moser takes nostalgia and shows its cruelty, using sentiment as material to cut. The two screens face the walls, consistent with corporeal techniques for school discipline. Their hang style alludes to monitors which frequent the kind of public space where crowds are made. The abundance of visual deprivation assumes a way to an incomprehensible passage, where seeing is not believing. This tunnel could also be called death.
As in Breathing Holes, consisting of a series of holes incised into the wall, the pattern appropriated from industrial design, usually found piercing metal planes. Installing the holes on a domestic presenting wall makes you think of other grates which live in our houses, other lives and places, which seep through the walls, as in a peculiar smell, which one experiences unaware if the neighbor has cooked badly or simply died. The holes reflect on a panel on the floor, eponymously titled XS, forever confronting each other in a vacuous stare. The works suggest another place where the image is obscured, the senses beyond sight are heightened, to show what can only be seen in the dark.
—Alex Thake
at Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt
until March 28, 2023