In Kelm’s pictures there is no exaggeration, no symbolism, no secret.
Jens Asthoff Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to announce our first solo exhibition with Annette Kelm from October 11 to November 8. The exhibition will feature a series of photographs depicting pre-fabricated houses in Germany as well as a number of new works. Kelm has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally. Her recent exhibitions (all 2008) include ‘Passengers’, CCA Wattis, Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, Witte de With, Rotterdam, and ‘KW － Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. Kelm studied in Hamburg and presently lives and works in Berlin. Kelm’s images are typified by an intense visual clarity and appear deceptively simple at first glance. Her compositions depict forms that are immediately recognizable, and perfectly executed in their framing. At times Kelm’s photographs give the impression of found images, extracted from the pages of a magazine spread or advertisement. Their focal point is overtly clear, but the cultural and historic relevance of the photographed subjects is not easily fathomed from the photographs themselves. Meaning never forces itself on us, but encryption or hidden meaning is absent in Kelm’s imagery. Kelm’s latest exhibition proposes an investigative series of photographs which pursue different visual strategies and methods. The series featuring prefabricated houses examines historical prefab houses that came into fashion in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century, photographed using a 4 x 5 large format camera. “These houses were on show and available for ordering at show-house or world exhibitions and international building shows,” says Kelm. Each house is isolated, almost sculptural and treated as an object in an unmelodramatic way. Her pictures lie somewhere in between documentation and staging, in which the question of seeing always takes precedence over that of knowing. *All text above provided by Taka Ishii Gallery