The Unseen and the Unseeable

A photographic dialog at Galerie Ruberl

Form Follows Function

Michael Frank

Skulpturen

Johannes Rigal

Why is that?
What becomes visible?

In this joint body of work, Frank and Rigal bring together two disparate perspectives that at first glance appear to have little in common. However, a more thorough investigation reveals similarities that enable the pictures to interact with each other. It is very much an abstract dialogue that highlights the unique role of photography to render the invisible visible.

These projects relate to each other by using photographic language and technique to the point that something „unseen and unseeable“ is laid bare and elevated aesthetically. The pecularity of the body of work „Form Follows Function“ by Frank, for example, is that an object hidden deep inside the body has been brought to light. The challenge lies in rendering the specimen, through the photographic process, from simple tissue in formaldehyde to an aesthetic element. Parts are declassified and form supersedes function.

If we turn our attention to Rigal’s work „Skulpturen“ we notice that unlike „Form Follows Function“ the objects living in the urban domain are clearly visible and recognisable even to an untrained eye. Through a very carefully focused photographic process - similar to Frank‘s specimens - the objects are de-contextualised; removed from the concrete and transmuted into something distorted and rather unclear.

Both projects stimulate our imagination and often ask more questions than they actually answer, it is about making visible. Both a visualization of the unseeable which must first be brought to light and released, and also a visualization of the more often than not unseen – just as we do not see the wood for the trees.