Haus am Kleistpark, Projektraum, Berlin 2023

ARS Kunstilinnak, Projektiruum, Tallinn 2023

Analogue silver gelatin prints 57 x 44 cm,
semi-matte, unframed, custom made hanging system

Analogue silver gelatin print 42 x 56,5 cm,
natural gloss, unframed, custom made hanging system

In Kaarina-Sirkku Kurz‘s photographic work, loneliness is communicated as an existential feeling of “being foreign in the world”. As already evident in her earlier works, her interest is geared towards physical sensations and the body as a medium to express inner conditions. The image material is exceedingly heterogeneous.

Based on conversations on experiences of loneliness, Kurz translates emotional and physical sensations into images and self-made objects which she then photographs in a distanced studio-like manner. Other things such as withering plants and decorative articles derive from household clearances of deceased individuals whose deaths first went unnoticed. In their isolated presence in the photograph, they turn into meaningful signs. A further group of pictures can be traced back to the artist’s search at flea markets: mask-like faces taken from black and white photographs, a desolate single-family house, and images of the big wide world which seems so strange. Here, the ambivalence of photography and the ambivalence on the horizon of sentiment reinforce each other. Specks of dust turn into stars. The sea appears as a bursting planet earth. The sky resembles a repellent surface.

To be foreign in the world alludes to an unsettled relationship between a bodily and emotional subject and the environment. This is what Kurz’s work demonstrates. The retreat is merely a shell, filled with desire.

Haus am Kleistpark, Projektraum, Berlin 2023

ARS Kunstilinnak, Projektiruum, Tallinn 2023