In the set theory, the intersection A ∩ B of two sets A and B is the set that contains all elements of A that also belong to B (or equivalently, all elements of B that also belong to A), but no other elements.
The intersection is a binary operation whose arity is two, and whose two domains and one codomain are (subsets of) the same set. Schnittmenge, German word for intersection, means literally the quantum of objects cropped together. 
Deriving from different sources they are not only congruent but shared, could even stand for the average. The work follows the idea of perception of belonging, affinity or extraneousness to nature, the Italian and the German one, which are not imposed by men like culture, mentality or urban landscape, but by climatical and geographical conditions. Flora and fauna can overlap, interchange, contrast, but finally they belong to the same idea of instinctive and inherent nature, following also Novalis’ romantic vision of nature as ‘Heimat’. Single parts of photographs are extrapolated and reassembled, creating circular spotlights that include overlays but also exit the frame, representing the (non)punctum that encloses more detailed key elements, alternating larger views of German and Italian landscape with fractions. A kind of personal perimeter, reflecting on pattern and its laws: do elements set the structure or does pattern precede the elements?

schnittmenge. punctum.

In a cut and paste society with information overload and digitally altered perception of the real, untied from photography's parallel time and space based origins, assembling is representative for image culture but also transcending. It reminds of texture and tactility, reflects on reality and its possible rearrangement, experiencing simultaneously multiple information. These 3d collages of nature and body parts in tiny handmade dioramas are brought back to bidimensionality through photography, like simulacra that bend restless and isolated fragments of multiple proveniences to a fragile but also tranquil whole. Reflecting on the veracity of image making and image taking, these sceneries have been deposited at the intersection of different media types, expanding the idea of straight photography on combined objets trouvés in physically constructed sets, temporarily assembled sculptures melting together into a flux of new roots.

intheinbetween

Selecting, isolating, transforming reality as key concepts of photography have been pushed to a limit by masking digitally with black paint the circumstances of the depicted scenes present in the historical paintings of the Acton Collection at Villa La Pietra in Florence, giving new context to women and their representation. By concentrating on dissolution and simultaneously emerging of content, floating body parts and attributes play with ambiguity of intention: absence and lack of presentation become a springboard for our own suggestive imaginations. What is left in is as important as what is left out, the implications of the underlying narrative of these canvases function as a site of projections, which imagine conditions, connections, relations, circumstances in a historical and contemporary context for these figures, deprived of their identity, walking us through a series of worlds, becoming prototypes, becoming us. Their interference as luminous radiances in a kind of spectrometric view, the omission of context and the implicit emphasis on negation makes their presence more intriguing. Encompassing reduction and (dis-)appearing they unfold their evocative emanation.
Seen as signals that are equally intense on different frequencies like 'white noise', the paradox of traces and immateriality through exclusion reflects on the invisible presence, on their vulnerability and strength. 
They are not part of, they are.

egress

the world as puzzle
so very tempting to want to distribute 
the entire world in terms of a single code.
a universal law would then regulate phenomena as a whole:
two hemispheres.
five continents.
masculine and feminine.
singular plural. right left. four seasons.
five senses. six vowels. seven days. twelve months. twenty-six letters.
unfortunately this doesn't work. has never begun to work. will never work.
which won't stop us continuing for a long time to categorize
this animal or that according to wether it has an odd number of toes or hollow horns.

                               Georges Perec

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While classifications and taxonomies are supposed to reassure undisputed belongings and bonds, the perimeter of our vision brings us to continuous twists: concealed unalterables and sediments of memories, associations, connections do coexist, even by denying a logical disposition.

Looking at the usual, ordinary, the infra-ordinary, also through biographical recollection, the fundamental codes of a culture that impose a priori an order to our experience can seem vague and fragmentary categories. Instead of an inventory - illusion of conquest - a 'combinatory' can reveal the loss and the relative at the same time between the signifier and the signified. as above so below is a kind of diary with allusions to extraneous familiarity, to the hermetic idea of non always obvious correspondences in a sort of unconscious and instinctive map of constellations of objects and experiences - the need to pair in a personal depositary.

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Bärbel Reinhard

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