Time Stands Still & Partituren | MBAW Art Gallery

Berlin-based artists Michael Kruscha and Michael Matthews come from different backgrounds, work in different media, and have very different artistic experiences and perspectives. Yet they have forged a deep personal and artistic friendship, evidenced by their shared interest in the malleability of photographic expression. Primarily an abstract painter, Michael Kruscha is also an avid photographer and world traveler. The images in his Time Stands Still series were taken over a period of 12 years, often in remote places in which the notion of public transportation seems almost ironic, and the quirky designs of these structures (ranging from highly ornate to minimally functional) calls into question the basic notion of “shelter.” Of them he says: One of my favorite quotes is by the photographer Arno Fischer: “When I take a photo of a man at a bus stop, there should be more to see in the picture than a man waiting for a bus.” To that I can add: whenever I take a photo of a bus stop where no one is waiting, and no bus comes, there’s more to see in the picture than a bus stop without a bus and without people. That, at least, is what I’m aiming for. Isn’t it often the case that we spend more time thinking about what’s missing than about what’s there?

Where Kruscha’s images of un-peopled bus stops in remote, foreign locations evoke an almost abstract quality in their physical and visual isolation, the Canadian composer Michael Matthews creates fully abstract, microcosmic images based on found textures and colors. In the series titled Partituren (the German term for musical parts or scores) Matthews finds kinship in the concept and nature of the musical score to the ideas and images in his visual art. Musical scores function as both graphic and symbolic representations of musical ideas. For Matthews, both art forms are inextricably linked, and his photographic compositions emerge, like his musical ones, from the development of lines, shapes, densities and colors. Taken together, the notions of close up and far away, static and dynamic, bold and subdued, representation and abstraction, are all on display for the viewer to tease out the intricate visual and metaphorical correspondences.