Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs represented by KUNSTAGENTEN, Berlin

	CARAVAN 5 installation view: Aargauer Kunsthaus / 28.11.2009 – 24.1.2010


	installation view: Aargauer Kunsthaus / CARAVAN 5 / 28.11.2009 – 24.1.2010 As the site for their Caravan show at the Aargauer Kunsthaus Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs selected a space within the collection to present a group of recent works. Their black and white photographs explore the narrative potential of still lifes. The artists are interested in the causal and associative linkage of objects, as well as in their photographic mise-en-scène. This new series of photographs continues along the lines of the earlier series Transformers (2008) and Biel, Biel Big City of Dreams (2008). In the former the art ists captured the miraculous metamorphosis of a sculpture, as a statue of the virgin Mary is transformed - from one image to the next – from a object into a human skeleton and finally into a smoking gun. ... Rather than within the individual images, the abysses here loom in between the images, i.e., in their sequence. For the latter the artists went on nightly forays through the city of Biel and created a site-specific series of photographs, in which they de-familiarise the everyday and the familiar by subjecting buildings and public sculptures to minor interventions. It is as if they used the camera to uncover the secret nighttime doings of these objects. Apart from thematic issues, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs are always interested in technical matters as well. For the black and white photographs shown at the Kunsthaus they resorted to the direct positive process which dates from the early days of photography. Unlike traditional ana-logue photographic processes, this process does not produce a negative, but rather only a unique print on positive paper which is considerably less photosensitive than negative film, resulting in exposure times of up to 20 minutes. By working in this manner they posit an antithesis to the omnipresence of digital photography. In addition to decelerating the process, they also compose their imagery in a real context which can be experienced by the senses, rather than in the virtual realm of digital imaging. Tricking gravity, overcoming physical boundaries and exploring technical possibilities – these are motives driving the artists.