Felix Kiessling
Alexander Levy – Berlin
June 1 – July 14, 2012
With the exhibition Tür und Stern the artist Felix Kiessling uses two media to dissolve our habitual ways of seeing things. The work shown is from the Vektor: Fotografien series, which is ongoing since 2011 and focuses on the irritation of spatial perception. Using over-sized vectors, anchored in reality as steel rods within landscapes, Felix Kiessling defamiliarizes space to create unreal impressions. The rods always appear horizontally or vertically in the photographs, making the vectors appear as the actual axes of reference in the image, which in turn makes the landscape seem like an unreal addition.A central role is played by a work specially designed for the space, Stern. The 6-sided, star-shaped installation consists of 12-meter-long rods that extend beyond the exhibition space, protruding like beams from the exterior, into the ground and through the ceiling. The perception of the actual dimensions is always limited – either to within the interior or to the extending beams – and the overall picture can only be understood in the knowledge of the other views. Thus, the viewer is always involved within Kiessling’s work, and the irritation is based on his perspective.
Like the works in this exhibition, all the works by Felix Kiessling are characterized by a preoccupation with spatial perception and the distortion of dimensions. Places are transformed, rearranged, and perspectives are presented. Kiessling plays with experiences, poses questions about perception, and confronts the viewer with the dissolution of the familiar.
