The Slightest Touch. Timpano by Sarah Westphal

A Florizelle,

Ce point, où une forme vire à l'informe, au chaos lumineux d'un excès de matière, où une forme se défait dans une autre, où le réel se mélange à son fantasme... un point pulsionnel baroque.

Christine Buci-Gluckman*

Sarah Westphal is a German photographer who lives and works in Berlin and in Ghent. Her work is currently on show at The Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne. With Timpano, she adresses the theme of a "visual fast." Nine large format or multi-parts photographs fill the gap left by important works which have been moved from the medieval section for the major special exhibition Secrets of painters, thus relating to a long tradition of the theme of  concealing and revealing. The title of the exhibition, Timpano evokes a historic genre of "textiles that were hung in front of valuable paintings" to underline their precious character. 

"Space is always present although we do not realize it. As soon as the slightest touch effects a change we can take a fresh look at that space. It is this touch, more than building things that I am interested in. Perhaps you could say that taking a photograph is the slightest touch. By doing as little as directing our gaze we touch things and are touched ourselves." Sarah Westphal 

Sarah Westphal

Timpano

Wallraf das Museum

Cologne

27. 9. 2013- 2. 2. 2014

*Christine Buci-Gluckman, La folie du voir. De l'esthétique Baroque, Editions Galilée, 1986

1, 2 Sarah Westphal, Photographs J'attends...

3 Maître de La légende de Sainte Ursule, L'apparition de l'Ange,(1492-1496), detail, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Photographs J'attends...