The Kunstfoyer in Munich presents Chameleon by Abe Frajndlich until April 1st 2024. Tomorrow January 25th there will be an opening of the exhibition. Abe Frajndlich sent us the following text.
SITE SPECIFIC INVESTIGATIONS OF A GLOVE
it’s all about seeing
and all the things
that get in the way
of that simple act.
and it’s about
visual communication
and how potentially ambiguous
its transmission
from one person to another can be
it’s about the myriad
“bliks”
or personal perspectives
each of us carries
in our brain and being.
about those axiomatics,
that more often than not,
just don’t fully
add up.
and that great distance
between what is,
and what might be,
that endless ocean
that forever
separates the two.
and to that ongoing
apparently nonstop party
each of us brings
our individual toys,
that we expect
to share
with the others.
or to put it
another way,
as John Barth
so aptly expressed it,
“it’s all like a floating opera,”
performed on a boat
going up
or down
the river
and from the small bits
of the play
we each of us catch,
and from the scattered gossip
that we hear,
we try
to make sense
of the totality.
and of course
we’re doomed
to fail.
the totality
is non sense
only the details,
the specifics
are apprehendable.
only the Now
exists,
and
the camera
records
that eternal
intersection
of time
and space,
and maybe
a taste
of even more
dimensions,
which much later,
in tranquility,
we feebly
attempt
to interpret
and make
coherent.
and pictures
are like that,
but maybe
even more so.
just opening
the shutter
will get you
in for ma tion,
but information
is often
not enough.
sometimes you
just need
to penetrate
to the next level
of knowing
to the bedrock
of epis te mo lo gy
and try
to reach
those layers
adjacent
if not at
the source.
and the glove,
linked somehow
to the hand
of creation,
is ever there,
hovering
within
our consciousness,
as we try
to take it
all in.
the glove,
also the interlocutor,
questions all
and everything.
when a photograph
is not a statement,
it is so often
a question.
as as such,
it keeps bringing us
back
by refusing
to shed
it’s overwhelming
ambiguity.
yes this was seen
by the camera eye,
but wasn’t it
even more
seen by the eye
of the imagination,
and isn’t that seeing
more durable,
than the diurnal.
and then again
maybe it was
just
the dreaming eye
that truly saw.
Abe Frajndlich
He has portrayed creative people from music, art and showbiz, depicted the limitlessness of the big city in a surreal way and brought the greats of photo history in front of the camera. With Abe Frajndlich. Chameleon, the art foyer presents the dazzling variety of themes by the American photographer Abe Frajndlich (*1946, Frankfurt am Main). Facets of his biography, which oscillates between many worlds, also find their place in the exhibition.
Around 200 works from the 1970s are on view, including Frajndlich’s earliest vintage prints from Cleveland. Streets, whether in New York, where the photographer lived for a long time, or in other places along his life’s journey, are always the stage for his pictures. A chance encounter on the streets of London with John Kobal, the collector and publisher of 20th century Hollywood portraits, led Abe Frajndlich to “his” themes of identity, freedom and photography.
CHAMELEON was curated by Celina Lunsford, artistic director of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, and co-curators Ezra Klein and Andrea Horvay; and further curated by Isabel Siben in munich
Opening January 25th, 2024
Abe Frajndlich : Chameleon
Until April 1, 2024
Kunstfoyer
Maximilianstraße 53
80538 München, Germany
https://www.versicherungskammer-kulturstiftung.de/
