Klaus vom Bruch

Klaus vom Bruch’s new photo series Invisibles plays with the relationship between photographic signs and reality and the textual ideas of the French writer and humorist Alphonse Allais. (See also Laurence Sterne’s lively text strategies.)

In contrast to iconic signs, photographic images, as indexical signs par excellence, do not evoke visual associations; instead, they stimulate immediate ideas, in this case through a sentence that is graphically linked to another sign; here it is the nearly invisible picture, analogous to the corresponding semantic aspect of this sign, of conceptual or object-related statements. The interpreter, who is only constituted in each case in the current process of signifying, determines which reference point is realised.

For those less interested in semiotic triangles, however, only a white, square photo with a separate line of text hangs on the wall. The format is reminiscent of an oversized Polaroid. With the text that was read in mind, the viewer recognises through their own movement the image that only appears through the gloss overprint. Associations and expectations configure what is seen and the visual humour. (The works, for example, are not reproducible.)

In 2015, during examinations of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square, an inscription on the bottom layer of the painting was deciphered, which says something to the effect of “Battle of blacks in a dark cave”. A corresponding text is supposedly hidden beneath the White Square: “First communion of anaemic young girls in the snow.”

Klaus vom Bruch, January 2016

In the exhibition:

Klaus vom Bruch
Secret Document Left on an Invisible Typewriter, 2015
Invisible Young Nymph Picking up a Snowball, 2015
Three Young Polar Bears Riding on an Iceberg, 2015
Text-image collages
Each 90 × 75 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Klaus vom Bruch
4’33”, 1986
Video, color, sound
Video, Colour, Sound 4:3, 6:12 min
Courtesy of the artist

Additional information about the artist