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Review Jan 20 2010 « | »
Ori Gersht at Mummery + Schnelle Ori Gersht's Evaders series of large-scale photographs of epic landscapes at Mummery + Schnelle

Katy Wan

For this exhibition at Mummery + Schnelle, two bodies of photographic work by Ori Gersht are shown together to suggest a paradox between sites of natural beauty and the morbid history by which they are often defined.

Mummery + Schnelle is a tiny, shiny West London gallery that resides, oddly, between dilapidated barber shops and the slick offices of advertising agencies. On my way I passed another gallery called 'Shoe', but to my disappointment it really did sell shoes rather than being an art dealer's with an audacious branding strategy. Consequently, I was not prepared for the unsettling quiet of a gallery inhabited by eerie photographs of swamps and silhouettes.

An accomplished practitioner and academic, Gersht's work is characterised by its explorations of the photographic medium in its literal use of time and, ultimately, as a marker of history and memory. The pieces in this exhibition are no exception to this, but unlike Gersht's previous freeze-frames of vanitas still-life explosions, the series 'Hide and Seek' and 'Evaders' are slow landscapes shot on long exposures.

In the first, main exhibition room, two panoramic photographs of rocky mountainsides from the 2009 series 'Evaders' are displayed opposite each other. On this occasion, Gersht's photographs are printed on aluminium which ought to create an incredibly smooth appearance. However, the texture of the landscape creates a bold, painterly effect, emphasised by the use of either a colour filter or a few cheeky clicks of the mouse on a photo-editing programme to enhance the blues and the greens of the rocks and grass.

The back room features the series 'Hide and Seek', made between 2008 and 2009. Perhaps less prepossessing, these being barely discernable images of marshes, the hang does complement the previous room of work which may leave you reeling from the feelings of wonderment and powerlessness in the face of awesome nature. Here, the technique of printing on aluminium appears more suited to its watery subject.

References to Caspar David Friedrich and the sublime are inevitable but deliberate, since 'Evaders' in particular is inspired by the fatal seduction of the German Romantic tradition. Gersht is specifically interested in the case of Walter Benjamin whose disillusionment famously came too late.

It is rare to find a successful inter-marrying of style and meaning, but 'Places That Were Not' features two conceptually and (sometimes) visually striking examples of work from Gersht in a deceptively disorientating part of London.

'Places That Were Not' is on at Mummery + Schnelle, 83 Great Titchfield Street, W1, until 27 February.

Ausra Linkeviciute

For an exhibition of photographs Places That Were Not is a particularly intriguing title. It poses a considerable challenge: how do you overcome the physicality of an object in front of a lens and make the audience - and perhaps yourself - doubt its existence? The saying 'a camera never lies' seems to dissolve in that very mist which hovers above and beyond the painterly landscapes of Ori Gersht. Perhaps nothing lies more.

With dramatic purple skies and violent rock formations echoing the paintings of German romanticism the beautiful large scale photographs from the series Evaders seem both utopian and menacing. The dreamscapes are disrupted by the unexpected detail which brings the image back to reality and reminds us that this is not a painting. Like the abandoned bag pack in the foreground of Far Off mountains and rivers, which unavoidably demands a projection of narratives from the viewer.

Exploring the interrelation between human history and a geographical place Gersht revisits the legendary Lister route where many intellectuals attempted to escape through the French - Spanish border during World War II. Is that Walter Benjamin on his final journey in the Pyrenees or the tormented angel that he touched upon in his final essay? More so than the large black figure stepping out of the tunnel into the light it is a haunting apparition in the framed snowy landscape that poses such a question.

Its distinct small scale and that documentary quality inherent in found photographs just adds to the unsettling mystery which is generated by the very inclusion of this 'realistic' image amongst the places that 'were not'. Despite clear historical references however the photographs do not stand as literal reenactments - the images detach themselves from a specific location entering a more metaphysical time and space.

This is also true of the minimalistic photographs from the second body of work Hide and Seek. With almost everything stripped away from the image the soft landscapes are more suggestive of a nostalgic dream rather than reality. By physically engaging with a place Gersht is also exploring the capabilities and limitations of the lens based medium. Instead of masking the seams of technology he appears to expose them.

What these metaphorical images eventually convey is something beyond a place - more like a whisper, a memory conjured up for a fleeting moment. Something on the verge of appearing or disappearing is magically fixed on paper. The photographer seems to capture the impossible - 'a place that was not'.

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