From January 27th to March 18th 2017, mianki.Gallery will be exhibiting new work by Jakob Kupfer in the solo exhibition, "contempo".

contempo (made-up word) stands for: in time, with the times, over time, transient, time-based, delivered over time.

Jakob Kupfer’s core medium and theme is light and the question as to how light itself might be presented to artistic effect. Increasingly clearly, a further theme is becoming noticeable, even visible, in his work ... time. With light and time, Kupfer combines two levels, which do not at first seem tangible to us. Devoid of matter. Volatile. Light and time stand symbolically for a moment, a blink of the eye.

The characteristic abstractness of light is of central importance to Jakob Kupfer. In his works, he forms from light a resonance space in which we can experience what is happening with our perception, as soon as we engage ourselves with the flow of light without explanatory contours. This is barely engaged in, and already an infinite number of images are given rise to, always new, always different. Just as they come into existence, the images again vanish. In this way, the medium of light - as is only otherwise the case with music - offers Kupfer the opportunity to lend a further dimension to the classic image, as a spatial work: time.

And time doesn’t pass. It arises constantly, forms moments of the present. How do we deal with these fleeting moments? This moment in which time is born and changes? Moments of the present, are hardly perceived and then are already in the past and therefore memories.

One experience we can gain from this is to learn to recognise and appreciate the impermanence and uncertainty as good things. Perhaps, we open up our awareness of the present, free to think, feel, perceive, without fixed images and statements.

“The positive present is the smallest and most fleeting point; by becoming aware of the present, it is already over, the awareness of the enjoyment always lies in the memory." (Karoline Friederike Louise Maximiliane von Günderrode, 1780 - 1806)

With kind support from:

EIZO

CONCEPT

Artist portrait Jakob Kupfer