All images courtesy of the artists and space. Photos by Mila Starosta.
In the exhibition Far away from climax, the artists Mila Starosta, Nishmi and Ana Eloisa Sommer-Madison present works connecting gender, intimacy, queerness and memories.
You were born to let go is an autoerotic, poetic film installation that deals with the transience of our existence and our innocence as earthlings. Everything we learn we will forget, everything that is around us will be destroyed, by time and people themselves. We will disappear, just like the generations before us. Nishmi opposes this exodus from a childlike Garden of Eden with images of their naked self, on the shore of Wannsee, letting their friends straighten the body in a collective ritual.
What interests me most about Mila Starosta's photographs is the process of creation. She is not interested in drawing an authentic portrait of the models, rather they are actors in her artistic universe. Fascinated by the medium of painting, the artist lays image over image, working with blur and long exposure times. The people in her photographs are reminiscent of fetuses that have grown too old, still in the abdomen of a gigantic mother. Crawling around, coveting, human-like creatures.
Memories of who I wish I was manages to connect the viewers with the artist's subjective narrative. Like in a well-written book, they find the main character in themselves. They are confronted with shameful desire. Found footage shots, show the artist as a child, one senses the parental demands and desires she was exposed to as a child. All the more clearly because we know it from our own childhood. We go through the fears of puberty, the burden of not being enough. In the end, we're at a party. Ana Sommer-Madison's art is concerned with sharing experience, seeking the collective through a subjective approach, trusting in the universality of her narratives and films. The shots are fast and fluid, she deliberately pays no attention to details in the composition. Who has time for abstraction when there is so much to say and life is running away from you?