Breaking
the mould

"In "Breaking the mould II", Sylvia Henze shows close-up superimpositions of old women talking about their war experiences. Who are they? What have they experienced? We don't know, because the cropped format prevents us from grasping the person in their entirety. Eyes, mouths, wrinkles again and again, composed and de-individualised by the dissolves into a concert. Exhibited in a group and with temporally staggered video loops, the idea of the choir is reinforced, the viewer's focus shifts between the individual traits of suffering to the war as a mass effect that multiplies individual suffering.

Sylvia Henze has opted for a silent video version. Without sound or surroundings, she removes the reports from their context, their regional location, and gives them an overarching generality that transcends time and place, which can stand for today's refugee situations as well as for those in whose temporal context the work was created in 2015.

The viewer concentrates on the facial expressions, painful memories visible in eyes and plaintively open mouths, traces of age, memories etched in deep wrinkles and yielding facial features. Mounted in concrete steles slightly below eye level, the viewer must bend slightly - bow - to get an unobstructed view of the faces trailing across the trablett screens."

Claudia Postel, gallery owner

Photos: Hajo Heye