Jeannette Stoschek

Extract from the Text “Local Color” (1) (2)  (2013)

(…) Inga Kerber explores in her works the reproductive potential of photography. Questions concerning original, copy, unicum and authenticity are fundamental ones for her. She investigates the pictorial possibilities of photography like a meticulous researcher. Her large, systematically arranged picture archive plays a determining role in the development of her art. She collects prints of her own works that she for example orders according to such subjects as “Bouquet of Flowers (Floral Still Life),” “Landscape” and “Men.” They are unspectacular, everyday pictures that are by no means beautiful in the classical sense. When Kerber has decided on a picture, she scans the photographs and has them printed in various shops on different types of paper. Each print has its own inherent look and feel and is a unicum. In doing so, the artist counteracts photography’s reproductive capacity. She moreover does not subsequently rework the photographs, deliberately resisting the temptations of potential photographic perfection. The motif is lent a new autonomy and a separate pictorial language by means of the size and how the works are strung together hanging next to or over each other. Kerber’s titles are arrived at systematically. The technique—pigment print—is followed by information on the size and then the subject is named in parentheses, for example “(Cliché of a Flower Bouquet II).” Kerber employs the French word “cliché,” which is used synonymously with photography and the photographic negative. At the same she also references the German term “Klischee,” which can mean replica, bias and printing block. Her titles themselves already broach the theme of the copying and replication of an image as well the questioning of the original notion of the image, the concept of the image and the expectation placed on an image. (...)

Notes:
(1) local color noun : the presentation of the features and peculiarities of a particular locality and its inhabitants in writing ( Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, 1998), p. 701 )
(2) This is an extract from an essay written by Dr. Jeannette Stoschek ( Head of Prints and Drawings, Deputy Director Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig ) on the occasion of an exhibition and publication called “Lokalkolorit / Local Colour” of 4 artists from Leipzig - Inga Kerber, Corinne von Lebusa, Edgar Leciejewski, Jochen Plogsties, Johannes Rochhausen taking place at Kerry Inman Gallery, Houston, Texas, 2013