Statement by Thomas Zika:
“…Before taking any photographs I am pretreating my analog 4×5 inch film material with mushrooms, which pollute out their spores latently on the film sheets, creating beautiful, but chaotic lamella circles. Depending on humidity and ripeness I let this hidden process endure from hours to months. Serendipity is my friend and my enemy: the emergences of the artefacts on the film sheets are accidentally and unpredictable. The fungi segregate their spores upon the surface lying underneath originating extremely delicate lamellar aureoles appearing as a mix of explosion and aura.
Additionally I am mounting roots from dehydrated plants inside the bellows of my large format camera, which create black fotogram-like outlines to echo a „menetekel“ from the future.
I am applying this trans-dimensional experimental method within my project „sovereign fruits“. I am going to photograph in a biotope near my hometown: a creek running through a forest valley, swampland, birds. Viewed superficially everything seems OK, but over the last years the habitat has changed enormously according to the impacts of global warming.
As I am no longer able to believe in any truth embodied in journalistic documentary picture language, my artistic work results in these chaotic, but beautiful photographs, which whisper of a different thruth of their own…”
THOMAS ZIKA – Sovereign Fruits
Opening Friday, 11 February, 2022, 7 p.m.
Duration: 12 February – 19 March, 2022
