Review of an event held on December 10, 2014. The following event details are historical.
YUV in the Refrather Atrium
On December 10, 2014, my series “YUV” was presented at the Refrather Atrium of the Koziol Funeral Home, Sandberg 4. The works were published in limited editions; at the premiere, attendees had the opportunity to acquire the first copy of each edition.
The evening combined photo art with cabaret and music by Britta von Anklang. The event began at 7:30 p.m. and lasted approximately one and a half hours. The entry fee at the time was 9 euros. During the break, Glühwein and festive treats were served.
Laudatio by Dieter Claus
Ypsilon – U – VAU – these are, technically speaking, the ingredients for a colored image, whether it’s a photograph or film. In the correct proportion, a black-and-white image yields “Ypsilon,” while two color samples, “U” and “V,” produce an accurate representation of the captured reality.
What happens when we remove “u” and “v”? When we remove the color from reality? If black and white serve as boundary markers for countless grayscale tones, whose contours still create an image of reality?
Enric Mammen shows us. He directs our gaze toward the essential, the form, the vessel for the content. Even more: he strips the everyday objects of our real world of all unnecessary elements, reducing them to their contour, their form, their meaning. He treats the objects before his camera with white spray paint, removing their color, stripping them of the suggestion of material structure, and enveloping them in plain white. White before white. The boundaries disappear.
Only through the photographer’s light do they regain their form, the shadows of the light casting become contours, forms, the new content.
Thus, we perceive the familiar in a new way: unfamiliar, stripped of its reality, and redefined through the photograph. In their own world, the two-dimensional world of photography. In Y – without U and V.
Enric Mammen has created a series of photographs. His gaze on things is new, different. By removing something from the objects in their real nature, he adds something new through the photographic process.
Thus, these become artworks, not mere representations, compressing the ordinary to such an extent that, through their size and perspective, they reveal their full beauty, detached from any context,
entirely themselves, and yet sometimes also something else.
Consistently, this series is only titled with numbers, and none of the works bears a name.
Thank you, Dieter Claus!
