WHERE IS THE ROMANCE IN THIS LIFE - Lennart Brede opens his solo exhibition for Gallery Weekend Berlin with this question. Various groups of works come together here, oscillating between control and intuition, between lightness and heaviness. The photographs tell of life - in all its fragility, beauty and contradictions. They are images that do not provide answers, but create space: For thoughts, memories, encounters. This exhibition is an invitation to get involved.
Lennart's photographs tell stories. Of people. Of moments. Of life, which is often tender and difficult at the same time.
In the show, two large series of works, ANGELS FALL and DU MUSST JETZT DOLLE STARK SEIN, meet and begin a dialog all of their own. Two titles that sound like sentences from a poem. And perhaps that is a good place to start: the photographs do not offer any ready-made answers. They are offers. Thoughts that live on on the wall.
The presentation of the works plays with perspectives: Some pictures or photographs hang low, almost on the floor. You have to bend down, get involved. The eye is guided - but the view is also broken. Because that is also what this is about: questioning our viewing habits. To open up new spaces in the familiar. Not a finished statement, more a process.
An open book in which everyone can write their own sentence. On the one hand, the Petersburg hanging serves a visual habit of the visitors, but at the same time playfully breaks this habit in the low hanging.
ANGELS FALL is clear, reduced, almost floating. A series that plays with light and shadow, with bodies that almost seem to glide out of the world. The photographs look like frozen dreams - quiet, beautiful and a little enraptured. The athletes' bodies become metaphors for this inner struggle - they symbolize the perpetual cycle between crossing boundaries and returning to one's roots. Lennart captures this in an impressive way - with surreal, almost dreamlike imagery that reflects the human quest for freedom, security and self-knowledge.
The 3-channel video installation is accompanied by a soundtrack created from recordings of underground frequencies and the movement of earth and rock. Sound, often associated with primal memories, is at the center of the experience and evokes a deep, intuitive connection to the physical world.
DU MUSST JETZT DOLLE STARK SEIN critiques the societal expectations we encounter throughout our lives. She presents a complex play of language and imagery featuring a female bodybuilder in a competition bikini and a knight's armor, symbolizing the dual pressures of strength and vulnerability that weigh on different genders. This visual metaphor highlights the binaries and stereotypes that still exist in today's society.
But the photographer was also concerned with control here. About form and a strict image concept. But something else came right after that. An urge to let go. And so - almost by instinct - a second, open group of works was created. TRUST THE PROCESS and the typo paintings were created. In contrast, they are more raw and direct. Texts on cardboard paper. Lines, colors, sentences that came from the moment. “Just because”, says Lennart - but of course there's more to it than that. They are flashes of thought, fragments of everyday life, observations, wishes, fears, small wounds. Sometimes political, sometimes personal. Sometimes both.
The works FLÜGEL AUS BETON and GIB MIR NOCH 1 TAG are a special part of the exhibition.
They are a tribute to Pablo Grant - “Dead Dawg” - a friend, artist and musician who died far too young. Pablo was a petit prince in the big city. He spoke of angels, of death, of hope - from the middle of the “Concrete Jungle”. The works are memories and farewells, but also a love letter to a deep connection.
Text by Judith Plodeck