Galerie Pleiku, Berlin, Germany
10.1.-30.1.2022
I have been observing how people gaze in crowds or hide behind masks. I have had to shut people out of
my mind, while looking through them, imagining that they weren’t there, as if they were transparent like
air. People breathe and exist in the air, they are continuities of their bodies in the air, the space we share,
in which we mix with others – we breathe the same air. People are more in the air than a moment ago,
floating, they seem more intangible: heavy minds weighing their bodies against the ground.
The phenomena of a still life, where one stays in place but doesn’t detach itself from the ground,
rotating in the air, as if in motion but still static, like images of themselves, declaring their momentary
essence while the edges are converging. The ingredients of a disaster revolving around a circle, a wild
animal becomes domesticated, the gaze of a beloved pet: the pet died, the world stopped.
I am thinking of people who are longing for a trip to nature, an escape to a nature trail, somewhere where
things seem simple: the reeds whisper, the surface of the pond vibrates, beneath the surface it surges.
The naked kneeling figure hides in a bed of reeds by the water, to wallow his experience of nature. It
changes its shape, absorbs the environment and disappears. It’s tragicomic, when a dramatic creature, a
man who has risen from the water to the shore, performs with animals.
..Ich und du, Müllers Kuh, Müllers Esel, das bist du..
IIDA NIKITIN 