memories I don’t have

When Johanna Schlegel uses photographic prints for her image manipulations, she radically intervenes in the motif that was initially present. Be it portraits, vacation slides or casual snapshots of a birthday party – the artist takes the material for her series of works entitled memories I don’t have from her family’s photoarchive. The selected images from family albums are reproduced in large scale and finely sprayed with chemical solutions. The coloured particles thus lay in a toxic bath until the liquid evaporates, leaving behind a rough patina. Through the repeated process of chemical treatment to the photographic plane, Schlegel deconstructs the human figures in the photographs to which she herself belongs. The silhouettes become increasingly unrecognizable and turn into abstract forms. The further the discrete particles escape their place of origin, the more painterly the results appear. The events that have been captured once are now obscured.

Johanna Schlegel’s memories I don’t have symbolize the complexity of memory. The series of works deals with the process of remembering and the loss of memory. In the course of time and stimulated by external influences, the artistic works profess an evocation of the past, which presents itself as an open form.