"KORRELAT", 2017–2018

– Wallpapered collage, dimensions variable
– KORRELAT 12“ Vinyl disc
– Leporello, s/w  manual Offset Print (duplex), 31 x 496 cm
– Table with record player


Sophia Kesting consistently works with her photographs and the forms of their elaboration against a pictorial ideal – that is, against those typical shots of ideals that we encounter so often when it comes to architecture or urban structures, to record and show (in an exhibition, a book, a booklet) in as undisturbed and positive a state as possible. Kesting’s project is something different, because with her work it becomes immediately clear that in a single room more forces come together than (conventional) architectural photographers (and their clients) could ever dream of. Each space is overwritten multiple times with information from its neighbourhoods and uses that are not provided for in the architects’ plan drawings.

The area of study for Kesting’s photographic research is the freight and central station of the capital of Tyrol, an area strongly characterised by the juxtaposition of different uses: garden allotments, often found in the immediate vicinity of railway lines, are replaced by fallow land and/or adjacent residential buildings. In the same way, local and global enterprises and companies have harnessed the geostrategic benefit of the place and settled here to ensure the smoothest possible transfer of goods and commodities. The different needs in this expanding area are therefore manifest, and it is feared that this coexistence of unequal forces will ultimately have to give way to a large-scale land-use plan to be able to continue the economic success story of Innsbruck in a global sense. The area is thus in a state of transition.

Sophia Kesting seizes the different user interests and puts them together. But it is also clear that from the outset, it is not possible to create a representation that provides a comprehensive overview of this area. Too many perspectives in the space overlap. The view is obscured – something always commands attention in the picture, which prevents an undisturbed reproduction of one of the many different architectural ensembles. The artist seizes this fact and visual impression and highlights it: she opts to completely abandon image hierarchies, instead merging the foreground and the background in extreme perspectives. Visually speaking, space between the different architectural structures is as minimal as a piece of the sky; as we know, Innsbruck is surrounded by mountains whose reproduction as a visual conclusion serves to integrate these scenes even more comprehensively.

The artist makes moments of extreme structural condensation utterly clear through her images. By collating her images (without white space) into a flyer and through the production of a record with the musician Andreas Trenkwalder, who has addressed this area and its sounds in his compositions, the artist succeeds in achieving this impression of a condensed experience without developing alternatives. In the exhibition, Sophia Kesting will not only present her work as a small-format flyer with the vinyl record, but will display excerpts from her work on the wall in the form of photo wallpaper. The huge ensemble of fragmented views of urban planning, accompanied by corresponding music, stands in stark contrast to the homogeneous urban structure that Innsbruck reveals at first sight. With Sophia Kesting’s (and Trenkwalder’s) work, however, it becomes evident that it pays to go off the beaten track when visiting a city that appears so smooth on its surface: These less popular areas are subject to transformational processes due to political and economic interests.