Visual Arts in Germany: Exhibitions and Artist Portraits

Paradise is not what I would exactly call it. Here at the Big Eden Club in Berlin there is rubbish all over the floor, the wiring is makeshift and has been laid on top of the plaster. The spotlight must have slipped because it is hard to imagine anybody wanting to focus the light on the seam where two fibreboards are joined together and bits of adhesive tape bearing witness to a communicative past.

Yet nevertheless the mood does not suggest tristesse, if anything a hint of melancholy. The light in the room shimmers mysteriously, but not harshly, between a deep red and a lush violet, a door is ajar revealing a brightly lit room.

A room with a view

The interiors that Anna Lehmann-Brauns photographically composes are mostly semi-public places like bars, cinema foyers, hotel lobbies, on occasion swimming baths, too. They are not rooms that are simply to be entered. There is admittedly a somewhat jaded glamour about them and if you were following stage directions, "making an entrance" would just not be enough – you would have to "make an appearance". Who though would be making the appearance? Creatures of the night (mainly), their female counterparts and anybody who fancies being one, too. With the exception of the Eden, these nighthawks are confronted with neat and tidily arranged scenarios, yet nevertheless the observer is somehow reminded of cold, stale smoke and there might even be a sticky ring on the bar left behind by a glass.

The way the light falls in these photographs is exciting and dramatic, powerful colours dominate the scene and there is always a hint that life is going on beyond the walls; it might be a view through a window, a door or maybe one of those wall murals of a palm-strewn beach or scenes of the big city painted on the wall that serve as a picture within a picture to awaken a yearning for a new, different form of reality.

A room as a stage

The artist, who was born in Berlin in 1961, once stated that the basic motif in her work was the yearning for things past and the desire to in fact preserve this past. The observer is initially reminded of Candida Höfer’s cautious peeping into public and semi-public rooms or of the documentation of futuristic forms of architecture by Maix Mayer, as Anna Lehmann-Brauns was trained, like them, at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig.

It is however not just interiors that are being reproduced here. Anna Lehmann-Brauns is not so much interested in depicting the rooms in their architectural dimension; she is much more interested in attempting to capture a mood – a mood that is calculated to provoke feelings, memories and associations. The depicted rooms provide a place, a stage or, to remain in the realm of two-dimensionality, an appropriate projection screen.

Sun in an Empty Room is the title of one of Edward Hopper’s chief works – that master of 20th-century American painting whose works focus on the loneliness of the individual and the melancholic mood. It is not just coincidence that Sun in an Empty Room is also the title of Anna Lehmann-Brauns’ recently published volume of photographs that features her work from the last eight years.

A room as a portrait

Alongside these almost theatrically staged interiors there is also a series of photographs produced by the artist when she was a student that involved models reminiscent of doll’s houses. The lighting, the powerful use of colour and the angles can certainly be compared with the images of real interiors. Whereas some however are easy to localise as real places due to their title as is the case with Big Eden, Berlin, others are individualised by their titles. Lehman-Brauns’ arrangements en miniature, compiled under the title Bitterblue, can be read as portraits.

Most of the time it is childhood memories that sparked the creation of these interiors. These "chambers" have a definite narrative character, telling of such things as the artist’s relationship with Käthe, Mr and Mrs S., Sebastian and other people from her own private sphere. As sparsely furnished as the rooms are, every element, every prop in these arenas of memory is imbued with a particular significance. They serve as representatives of those people for whom the interiors are intended. You start to think up your own stories: like Grandmamommy always putting on her best necklace and a few splashes of perfume when getting ready to go out – never forgetting to check the way she looked in the mirror; Grandma Kessler having green fingers when it came to plants. Drinking filter coffee with Käthe and Dieter dishing up everything that was to be found in the refrigerator. Remembering one’s childhood always means coming to terms with one’s past, too.

This is most probably why Lehmann-Brauns dedicated a work to Mamma that is so very different from all the others. It is a bathroom. A vibrant red wet room with all mod-cons: wash basin, toilet, bathtub full of bubble-bath. On the wall there is a poster of that famous Stern magazine cover from the beginning of the 70s showing a number of female celebrities who admitted they had had an abortion. There is no door in this room, no window, no light pouring in – nothing from which you might be able to deduce a way out. The only thing you are left with is the view of a reflection in the mirror.

Anna Lehmann-Brauns: Sun in an Empty Room. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2008; German/English, ISBN 978-3-7757-2083-0