Zirkelsch(l)uss

An Exhibition With Dieter Huber, Herlinde Koelbl and Jens Umbach

Violence and war are forms of conflict that have shaped human civilizations since their beginnings. In the form of aggression and expansion or defence and armament, they determine a large part of the political options for shaping policy. How can I protect myself? What can I do preventively to defend myself? How do I prevent my need for protection from threatening others and pushing them to arm themselves? Individuals and nations must face these questions permanently and under changing circumstances. Can the logic of violence be prevented from becoming a vicious circle? A word, a blow, a shot can trigger it, and a process is set in motion that usually turns out to be a circular reasoning: My enemy is evil, and because he is evil, he is the enemy.

In his series "#STRIKE", Dieter Huber shows aesthetic photographs of bullet holes, from war-inducing hits to test shots that are both attractive and repulsive at the same time. In their formal aesthetics they are at the same time an expression of brute force. In his series "#SURVEILLANCE", also presented, Huber reflects on the exploitation of the human need for security by means of computer-generated images. It deals with the tension between freedom and security both on an individual and a societal level.

The photo series "THE AFGHANS" by Jens Umbach was created as a follow-up to the project "AFGHANISTAN", which was presented in 2014 at the Museum for Sepulchral Culture. The 42 large-format portraits showed soldiers before their deployment to Afghanistan, during their preparatory training, then in Masar-e Sharif and later after their return to Germany. During his second stay in Afghanistan, Umbach concentrated on the people who lived in the immediate vicinity of Camp Marmal, in the neighbourhood of the German troops. Like the German Armed Forces before him, he photographed the Afghan population against a neutral, white background. In this way he isolates the portrait persons from the events surrounding them. Umbach's photographic position may seem distant at first glance, but it shows the same compassion and respect with which the exhibition seeks to address the theme of violence and war.

The exhibition ZIRKELSCH(L)USS shows artistic examinations of the consequences of thinking in these categories. Herlinde Koelbl has documented in her comprehensive work "TARGETS" what soldiers shoot at when they learn to kill. Targets and images of the enemy become a unit that give the enemy a face. How many times must one have fired at the image of the enemy to be able to hit him in case of war?