Dorothée Schmid Art Consulting London "Berlin Rooms" Exhibition, 2005-09-16
Jens Komossa Berliner Zimmer / Berlin Rooms
“I like to concentrate on one image only and do that really well” says Jens Komossa about his night photography. His mechanical working method demands a high level of economy in his creative thought process and in the execution of works. With a long exposure of roughly five hours, during which time the lens collects all the natural light it is surrounded by, the artist only manages to work on one image per night.
The camera captures the rays that bounce back and while the eye perceives the light at night as white it possesses actually very different colours: green, orange, yellow… The colours in Komossa’s photographs are strong and at first glance, we don’t realize that these colours are not the colours of daylight. They certainly strike us at times as unusual in their extremes of coldness or warmth.
Night photography is what technically and aesthetically inspires Komossa; he works in series. The present series ‘Berlin Rooms’ consists of 38 works, which are all shot in private spaces around Berlin. Looking from an inside perspective out into the urban landscape of Berlin at night, the series is a personal portrait of the city as well as an indirect portrait of the person inhabiting the space. The sociological aspect of the series is the resonant motif. The space in which the individual lives becomes a stage for a presentation of the self. While there is an absence of the person in Komossa’s works, it is through glimpses of their created stage, that we are presented with their human existence.