Galerie b2

Photogenic Sites transformless

For the project Border Horizons Doris Frohnapfel travelled through Europe from 2002 to 2005, photographing the natural, constructed or abandoned boundaries between countries. With the camera she penetrated into instable in-between areas, the border zones which at once – while open to movement – join and separate. Our threatened, uncertain existence is mirrored here: unfree, controlled and at the mercy of something or somebody. The border appears as the undefined empty space that, oscillating between reality and imagination, between certainty and disorientation, separates the self from the other.

Later, Frohnapfel later continued her travels, explored the Mediterranean region, searched for reference points and forged connections between history, culture and fiction.
In 2012/13 and 2014 her voyage took her to Lebanon. She visited Beirut (2012 and 2013) and stayed there for several months while taking part in an art exchange project (2014). Here, too, heterogeneous research investigations were the starting point of her journey. She used documen- tations, archives, film and literature to get a feel for the country and its history.

In Beirut she photographed a series of bomb-gutted houses she had searched out in the gaps and neglected small corners within the city: leftover, abandoned, useless remains of structures in a metropolis gripped by a fever of redevelopment. Her photos not only capture the loss of old values, of the splendid elegance of historical houses or relate the sadness felt at suffering and death – but also directly depict the deserted battle site that remains visible in its desolation and forlornness. Here the rubbles stands for senselessness and disillusion, for something that is without form or history, for chaos. Structure, construction and harmonious forms are negated, the houses stand there like impassive bodies, lifeless and torn open. Doris Frohnapfel looks for her subject in ordinary, unheeded places. Her – figuratively speaking – archaeological finds, the shards and fragments which later gain a clearly dis- cernible different value when cast in bronze, are found at fill hills, demolition dumps and rubbish piles, at so-called forgotten, unstable (un-)places, where we are less likely to come across treasures, encountering instead undefined things, pieces which have gotten there by accident, seem- ingly pointless and broken, and are buried there as the vague, incidental parts of history.

(Babette Richter, Galerie M29 Richter Brückner)