How often is our mind actually resting fully in the here and now? Memories, hopes, associations all of a sudden penetrate, overlay the moment. Myrta Köhler visualizes this simultaneity in her EXCA(R)VATIONS: By partially removing the topmost layer of developed photographs, she allows a second motif to emerge within the picture. The haptic element of scraping and carving illustrates the insistence, “im-pressive-ness” of imagination and emotional memory. The resulting “subtraction” is at the same time addition of another reality. And perhaps: an invitation.
The free play of associations is contrasted in the series FLOW AND THEN by another idea of freedom: What could it look like to let go of all concepts and entrust oneself completely to uncertainty, to the blank future? Myrta Köhler explores this question in her large-format cyanotypes, exposing her body to the sun for up to an hour on individually prepared paper. This “photography in slow motion” creates “white shadows” on a blue background: images of a weightlessness made possible only by relinquishing control. During the process of creation, the artist surrenders herself to time, light, water and, not least, to chance.
Although employing very different techniques, both series visualize imprints in the form of white areas. In both cases, it is these “voids” that ultimately constitute the meaning of the pictures.
Myrta Köhler lives and works in Berlin. Her works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions.