PAULINA GIMPEL | tell me what it`s like to be you

Opneing: Friday, 03.07.2015, 7 pm

Exhibition: 04.07.–01.08.2015

Artist Talk: Thursday, 23.07.2015, 6.30 pm

In the exhibition tell me what it‘s like to be you Paulina Gimpel presents a spatial installation consisting of 3 works, each an essayistic variation on the same general theme.

What does that “thinking of someone” signify?

An unopened letter is something tremendous. It has power, it carries a potential. Declinations or commitments, diagnoses, confessions, bad tidings or professions of love: with its seal intact, it is a silent witness, potential liberator, traitor and destroyer alike – the postcard’s intimate/self-contained colleague. In the work all the mighty words unspoken that very silent power potentiates to 275, for the most part handwritten, letters that were never addressed, yet preserved. Sealed, and hung in a neat rectangle, they keep their contents in concealment. The only clue given is the date on the envelope.

This non-redemption is juxtaposed to the work  a melancholy language of the future wherein the conceived is to get on its way, without envelope, bodiless. An experiment in telepathy: to be seen are 12 attempts at thought transmission between the island of Sylt and London, the sitting-down and thinking-towards from one to the other. A speculator only a moment ago, the viewer is now demanded to bring the video recordings in congruence – to perceive synchronisms of behavior, detect ever-so-slight rhythms and impulses between those in telepathic communication – to visually attest to the mental connection.

In turn with the projection a sound collage is audible in the showroom. The previous quiet is interrupted by all kinds of voices, scraps of conversation, clipped, repetitive, now then the clamor of thoughts, its tempo relentless.