Jochen Lempert, Photo-sensitive Variations

Several monographic exhibitions have recently revealed the work of the German artist Jochen Lempert in France.

After the Musée d’art contemporain de Rochechouart and the Crédac in Ivry-sur

Seine, it is the turn of the Centre Pompidou (May 11th—September 5th,

2022, curated by Florian Ebner and Julie Jones) to welcome the moving constellations of the photographer who,

trained in biology, invites us to observe new coexistences between living things.

Paradoxically, it is probably the discretion of his images that first catches the eye. Delicate images invariably revealed in black and white, where the grains of evanescent motifs—pollen in suspension, scattered sand, rays of light—merge with those of their prints. Jochen Lempert observes the daily, almost banal coexistence of living things, as much as what the language of images can say about it. A sharp gaze that one would be tempted to describe as being on the prowl, if the artist’s attitude did not seem so far removed from predation. A photographic capture does take place but rather in the manner of a collection, a gleaning that is modest and precious at the same time, whose fruits will then be sorted and processed. The modesty of the motifs makes the iconography familiar, yet it remains singular, even strange. Gathered in urban environments, natural landscapes and, more rarely, those hybrid spaces that are zoological parks and natural history museums, beings and things, almost trivial, often unseen or little known to us, are magnified in delicate and fragile prints, presented in a minor key, unframed, directly on the wall, thereby offering a new coexistence in the exhibition space.

Lempert is the craftsman of his art. In a studio-laboratory, the artist makes his own gelatine-silver prints on matte baryta paper. The careful attention he pays to the sensitive realities that surround him extends to an investigation of various printing techniques, from prints with changing brightness and contrast to experiments in direct contact with photosensitive paper. Lempert thus explores the possibilities of the photogram with original variations that he calls “foliograms” (where various leaves of plants are used as negatives) and “luminograms” (where the bioluminescence of dragonflies or glow-worms serves as the active substance). The notion of the materiality of the image becomes topic when Lempert photographs prints in situ, like the equine portrait crossed with light.The mise en abyme of the question of representation continues when ordinary scenes appear of vernacular shots being taken with a phone, now an almost universal device for the production of contemporary images.

DOCUMENTARY NATURALISM

Lempert’s artistic practice is undoubtedly based on documentary naturalism, a manifest legacy of his initial training and career as a biologist. Since then, the self-taught photographer’s propensity to observe fauna and flora has been extended by means of images. He gathers together an entire ecosystem inhabited by birds—foremost pigeons, but also cormorants, flamingos, alca impennis or great auks, this extinct species of which only taxidermy specimens now remain—insects and mammals, human beings included, even if the latter often appear only partially—a hand, a back—or undetermined through blurred or distant silhouettes.The botanical world is also abuntantly represented, full of plants and trees, flowers and pollens, roots and branches, to which are added mysterious minerals. A patient curiosity animates Lempert’s keen gaze, which is both precise and open to surprise—his first, then ours. His attentive

Zwei Spatzen. 2022. Épreuve argentique sur papier baryté mat gelatin-silver print on mat paper.

(© J. Lempert ; Court. l’artiste, galerie ProjecteSD, Barcelone ; Ph. Ian Waelder)

work is nourished by a tireless reflection on what seeing and showing mean. The artist has said that this exploration of what makes an image, for example that of a flower, worthy of interest, is to him an ever-renewed challenge in a quest for the translation and interpretation of reality. Incidentally, are we ever really sure of what we are seeing? The morphological question lies at the heart of Lempert’s endeavor, which multiplies the sleights of hand. Discreet analogies: a sparrow flying over another, standing on the ground, seems to evoke a dead leaf, whereas autumn foliage, conversely, resembles a colony of birds. There are phenomena of mimicry and camouflage, a wire passes for an earthworm, a fish turns chameleon, grains of sand play at being stars. The indecision, or even confusion, deepens further when abstraction prevails, at the limits of the visible: details of spiders’ webs, spots that we assume to be coloured of orchid petals, traces left by the trajectory of a fly… so many attempts to change our vantage point and to imagine, since we are not able to adopt it, the perspective of other species.

Efeuschatten und Pferd. 2021. Épreuve argentique sur papier baryté mat gelatin-silver print on mat paper. (© J. Lempert ; Court. l’artiste, galerie ProjecteSD, Barcelone ; Ph. Roberto Ruiz)

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

For Lempert, shooting is an almost daily practice. It is nearly always done with a 50mm camera—closest to naked eye vision, without any preconceived programme, upon the circumstances. The moment is decisive, of course, but it is one amongst many others still to come. Lempert explains: “There is a long path between the shooting and the final existence of an image. This first decision to take a photo is very brief, it is a first relationship that is ultimately quite thin and vague. That immediacy is not enough. The end result sometimes even turns out to be very different from my original intention.” A succession of revelations for an artist who claims to start from scratch at every stage, from the development of negatives to the first working prints to the definitive images. Where the original intuition of the shooting is maintained only if a potential of association with other images is established. In other words, Lempert’s photographs do not find their raison d’être individually, but in conjonction with an organically-growing corpus: newcomers only see the light of day— that of a public presentation—if they are in harmony with the rest of the repertoire. Lempert does not draw from frozen archives but from a living sum, strong in its powers of agency. Surprising narrative sequences then emerge, distributed in space as moving constellations: various formats (down to the minuscule, the size of a ladybird) and unexpected placements invite us to get closer, or on the contrary, to move away, to kneel, or to hold our gaze up. Lempert’s elliptical assemblies, which are affixed, rather than hung, as if exposed naked against the surface of the wall, are genuine installations. Experimented with in the studio, the artist’s combinatorics is fully deployed in response to a specific context, depending on the site’s architecture, atmosphere, any other works nearby, and the thoughts and interests of the artist at the time.

An echo of the pioneers of scientific photography such as Anna Atkins, Jean Painlevé, or William Henry Fox Talbot, in the line of productions associated with the New Objectivity or the New Vision of Karl Blossfeldt, László Moholy-Nagy or Albert RengerPatzsch, Lempert’s work also echoes the influence of pictorialism at the end of the nineteenth century, borrowing some of its effects and treatments: formal plays on light exposure and texture give rise to an aesthetic tinged with a certain lyricism. Perhaps the very first of the subtly confusing perceptions generated by Lempert’s images ultimately lies in this impression sometimes that these chiaroscuro images could be graphite drawings. Lempert appears to place his creatures and natural elements outside of time. Proof of this is the way he dates his images, not according to when the photographs were taken but rather according to the date of their public presentation. This shows the extent to which this work is about the materialization of a shared vision, of a powerful and moving encounter, surprising, amusing also, between the work and the person who contemplates it… So many variations on the same invitation to experience a renewed complicity between living things.

Béatrice Gross is an independent curator and arts writer.

Jochen Lempert

Né en born in 1958 à in Moers

Vit et travaille à lives and works in Hambourg Expositions personnelles récentes (sélection) Recent solo shows:

2021 Visible Light, ProjecteSD, Barcelona

2020 Sea Level, Feuilleton, Los Angeles ; Photographien, Amden Atelier, Amden ; Phenotype, CAC, Vilnius ; Jardin d’hiver, Le Crédac,

Centre d’art contemporain, Ivry-sur-Seine

2019 BQ Gallery, Berlin ; Jochen Lempert Fotos an Büchern, Camera Austria, Graz

2018 Predicted Autumn, Musée départemental d’art contemporain, Rochechouart ; CA2M, Centro de Arte dos de Mayo, Madrid

Expositions collectives récentes (sélection)

Recent group shows:

2021 La Mer Imaginaire, Villa Carmignac,

Île de Porquerolles

2020 Parliament of Plants, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein ; Sea Pieces: Facts and Fiction, Museum Kunst der Westküste, Alkersum/Föhr ; Pictures from Another Wall, De Pont Museum, Tilburg