The Issue:
Missing implies a former or future state of completeness: Now something is missing that should be there, because it used to be there. Now something is still missing, but later this lacking state will be healed, fulfilled and completed. The term “missing” thus deals with questions of both formal and emotional qualities.
Seen from a formal angle it may rise thoughts about missing parts in a compostion, parts that have been taken away or will still be completed, parts that are not longer perceivable as they are covered, e.g. painted over or covered with other material.
Yet already in a “merely formal” approach, questions of narration and emotions do arise: Why has this been covered or extinguished ? What was there before? Why can’t we see it? Why do we feel the urge to restore the whole picture, the whole composition and are not content with the beeing state of art?
So “missing” mostly might go along with a disturbing feeling of deficiency and inadequacy but also with feelings of hope and expectation. “Missing” might mean something (or someone) that ought to be there and might even express a feeling of longing and nostalgia thereby hinting at ideas of utopia and salvation.
The Exhibition (as shown in 2013 at Gerichtshöfe Berlin)
Formalities:
Works on this wall (image below) describe a void, an empty location, a thing missing. Sculptor Margret Holz ( below, left, 3 works) has a formalistic view on the issue, drawing our attention to the missing bits between house walls, depicting clearly shaped bits of sky. In Margret Holz’ photos the void between the houses is transforming into the actual object in question. No longer the architecture of the various European cities is the focused object of research but the various “negative” shapes of sky between it. Showing several series of various architectural provenience she is comprising a catalogue of how you can perceive the sky depending where in Europe you are.
New York artist Hermes Payrhuber’s work (right, white frame) is called “Abwesenheitsnotiz”, which can be translated by “note of absence” but is also the name of that obsolete office paper through which you would be noticed what happened while you were missing from the office. Payrhuber’s “Abwesenheitsnotiz” is a self-referential pile of photos of an object (which itself is called “void”) from which the actual object is cut out), the framed object thus being a placeholder and reference to another object, which is only portrayed in it’s absence.
A real “Abwesenheitsnotiz” ( a pink writing pad “ while you where out” from a pre-digital age) is sampled among the found objects on the same wall (collected by Jakob Roepke). Other found obects from the group (small works left) are a recipe of an old cookery-book (with it’s ink so blurred that it can’t possibly be read and used for cooking), a plaque (disclaiming liability for lost objects), and a tiny card from a bible-quiz (quoting “Verbrannte Bücher”- burned books, which ,of course, in Germany alludes to an certain dark period in history).
Small sized collage paintings by Jakob Roepke,( from his series of interiors, populated by men, strange shapes and animals, 4 small works right) are now changing his narrations in a new way. Unlike in all his other pictures in this exhibition we see empty scenes, quasi waiting for their tiny protagonists. In Roepke’s other collages in the exhibition parts of the image are painted over leaving us wondering about underlying former states of works.
Text by Jakob Roepke
