Black-and-white pictures, rooms in nightlight or twilight, deserted, enigmatic, mysterious. One believes to know these places, and yet they do not belong to the ordinary and mundane. – They are perfect. Without traces of use and the impression of time, they become models, prototypes of our imaginary cosmos. The collective memory of the Western world, its dream of efficiency and impeccability, constitutes the trove of images that Steffen Kern’s art reflects. “The image and film productions from the 1950s and 60s played a key role in the postwar TV media revolution. The fact that most Western households were furnished with TV sets led to many people being confronted with the same images worlds, thus heralding a globalization of images,” he says, explaining why his pictures are not based on photographs—at least not directly. The flood of always the same images that we encounter daily in films and photographs are merely the distant echo of basic models that have been worn away and assimilated by this constant repetition.

Steffen Kern continues the process. Using a meticulous technique of ink, colored crayon and watercolor on paper, he paints and draws places and objects he is familiar with at second and third hand, transforming their banality into magic: The deserted room entitled “Meeting” appears to consist solely of light and shadow. The “House” discernible as a dark silhouette against a night blue sky becomes a protective space due to its warmly illuminated windows. The “Red Chair” shines in glamor in front of a purple curtain. “Porch and Two Windows” is irritating because of the mysterious light reflections. All the forms appear gentle and soft, their contours blurred in the darkness. One senses that the artist’s gaze harks back to a time before television. Georges Seurat’s shadow figures emerge from the past, from an epoch when photography was in its beginnings.

At the time, Charles Baudelaire, a contemporary of Seurat, denied photography any artistic quality, but conceded that it played an important part in building up the “archive of our memory.” Photography, in his view, can and should preserve what has been lost. In this sense, the art of Georges Seurat is closer to that of Steffen Kern than one would initially think. Both artists counter the flood of photographic images. Their motifs are not based on concrete photos, yet their respective drawing techniques are intent on imitating characteristics of photography, while at the same time distancing themselves from it. They take up the special chromaticity of photography, adhere to seemingly everyday motifs, place emphasis on the contrast of light and shadow. But their pictures are unique. They possess the aura that Walter Benjamin saw lost for photography.

Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy

Steffen Kern's meticulous charcoal drawings initially appear to the viewer like photographs. This is achieved primarily by mastering moments from photography, such as blooming, depth of field, or flash shadows, whose perfect graphic translation the artist has appropriated. Analogously, the presentation takes place in frames and passe-partouts that evoke associations with "classical" photography.

However, the image finding is not done, as one might think, by drawing from real, existing photographs, but rather the artist relies on a pool of "meta-images" in his memory, fed by films, photographs and pop culture. He calls these images, which are recognizable to a large part of the general public and therefore collective, "meta-images," comparable to the "collective image memory" to which, for example, Cindy Sherman refers.

Without concrete models, Kern's works are projection surfaces that must be filled by the viewer himself with answers to the various narrative levels and questions raised in the images.

Karharina Schwinn