“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.“

The quote from George Santayana (philosopher) hangs in Berlin’s Gesundbrunnen subway stop above the entrance to Berlin’s Underworlds.

Thinking about the future and the past is one of the critical features of being human.

The Trio – exhibition remember the future with Jennifer Bannert, Patricia Lambertus and Mara Sandrock deals with historical events and the role of life in its transience.

Jennifer Bannert’s afterglow series is based on a photographic work made in Marseille and shows the skins of various species of fish. Since the fish were sold at the Old Port not long after being caught, the skins still shimmer in many colorful nuances. Life, only just expired, still appears visible.

Patricia Lambertus‘ visually powerful spatial installation is based on the historical wall paintings of the ancient city of Pompeii and brings them into a contemporary context. Within the pictorial space there are diverse layers of images that can be read like archaeological stratigraphies. The installation by Patricia Lambertus moves in the tension between fiction and reality as well as between beauty and destruction. Historical-social events and their contexts as well as their relevance and resonance in the present are traced and pictorially realized. The focus here is on the fractures, cracks and interfaces.

In Mara Sandrock’s works, the traditional materials of painting are stripped of their usual functions and combined with materials from other origins such as intestines, leather, latex, paper, wax or bio cellulose. Through manipulation and neglect, new works are created, which the performative character of the artistic material. They grow and proliferate, layer, curl and clench, expand and contract. Partly directed and induced, partly unpredictable and difficult to control. The selected materials are in a constant process of change. The idea of the unfinished nature of the image plays as much a role as the thoughts of decay and the finiteness of works of art.

text edit: Isabella Sedeka