A note infused with the New Age introduces you to the exhibition. Use your imagine
and feel yourself, it reads. Open to the world and fill up with positive energy. You will
regenerate every cell of your being. Everything is fine. You fall in love with yourself.
You are safe. Here, you can be yourself, you will start to feel the magic, the text repeats.
Immediately, your attention is directed to the tents. The camp looks like a storm have
just passed over it, and its power has thrown the works around the exhibition space. One
of the tents stopped on the wall, the other stands behind another wall. The last one
seems like it was pushed through narrow doors by otherworldly energy. There is a part
of the photo on one of the pillars depicting a frail pail of stones. The cairn stays intact
with its peak surmounted by a fluttering flag made of a sweater with a big peace sign on
it. The disturbing silence reigns in the room.
Mile stones marks a barely detectable path. Strangely familiar photographs and prints
fill the track. The tents are covered with collages showing parts of bikini bodies with a
sea in the background. The next one is plastered with black and gold rhombuses and a
pattern made from grey and red letters. A little bit further you find fragments of various
clothing companies logos. You see a next logo and a next slogan: I AM, which vaguely
appears somewhere in between bigger „I” and smaller „WE”. You have the feeling that
you had already seen all of that cutouts before. There are also two prints hanging on the
opposite walls. They depict mountain peaks covered with similar image samples. But
under them you may still catch a glimpse of rocks and trees.
The dreamy image from the introductory text may quickly vanish into thin air. The note
as well as nearly everything on display are actually descriptions or depictions of
imaginations. The text is a copywriter’s bait luring into phantasmic Soul Camp, a place
from your youth to which you would like to get back. The scene in which the exhibition
has been embedded, is curtained off by scans of chain stores plastic bags. A marriage of
images which are meant to make consumers more beautiful, fancy, elegant, comfortable,
etc., and bring closer to the real themselves.
However, the exhibition does not seek to provide a final ascertainment, an unambiguous
attitude, or an explicit narration. Even though it seems to problematize the subject of
consumerism, it is still more of a game with its aesthetics and excessiveness. The
project captures images, materials, and slogans on the same principle as they seize the
view of what is visible; creating a completely accidental stream of experiences, motifs,
and narrations. Therefore, the presentation of Carolin Seeliger is a clear statement of the
gallery. Heit is the password which sets the course for the gallery program. In common
use, -heit as a German suffix allows to transform a concrete idea into an abstract one.
When it comes to this exhibition, it is an emphasis on real and possible relationships
between objects, images, and contents. It is a creation of a situation where the truth as
well as the falsehood of what is possible to see and experience stand on an equal footing
and boast the same creative potential.
Mariusz Urban
