STRANGEPLACE Sabishii

Katrin Paul is an artist work­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly with paper, instal­la­tion, and pho­tog­ra­phy. Her stud­ies took her to Dort­mund and Karl­sruhe as well as to the Tama Art Uni­ver­si­ty in Tokyo, where she lived and worked dur­ing sev­er­al study and schol­ar­ship stays. In her artis­tic prac­tice, she explores the mate­ri­al­i­ty of paper, trans­form­ing it through tech­niques such as tear­ing, fold­ing, and the appli­ca­tion of heat and liq­uids. Her works move between draw­ing, object, and spa­tial instal­la­tion. Paul has exhib­it­ed her work in Japan, the USA, and Europe and has par­tic­i­pat­ed in numer­ous exhibitions.

geschnit­ten – geze­ich­net
Papi­er, Bleis­tift auf Papi­er
60 × 50 × 50 cm
60 × 60 × 80 cm
30 × 30 × 40 cm 

geschnit­ten – gelöchert

“Sabishii” gath­ers urban views by Peter Voigt from Tokyo and Hiroshi­ma, made at night or under over­cast skies. Voigt avoids icon­ic set pieces and focus­es on archi­tec­tur­al con­stel­la­tions that arise from a mul­ti­tude of details and com­po­nents. The dig­i­tal large-for­mat cam­era works with rec­ti­fied per­spec­tive and high pre­ci­sion; scale, rhythm, and joints become leg­i­ble.
The images are sober yet nar­ra­tive­ly con­densed: mean­ing emerges from arrange­ment, inter­vals, and traces of use. The scenes are large­ly unpeo­pled; occa­sion­al fig­ures appear—not as pro­tag­o­nists, but as mark­ers of scale and time. Oth­er­ness and self-rela­tion coin­cide; what is seen part­ly detach­es from the named place and draws atten­tion to the act of seeing.

Dai­go Fuku­ru Maru

Lucky Drag­on No. 5 (Dai­go Fukuryū Maru)
Tokyo, March 1, 1954 remains the hinge of this object’s biog­ra­phy: exposed to radioac­tive fall­out from a U.S. hydro­gen bomb test at Biki­ni Atoll, the crew suf­fered acute radi­a­tion; radio oper­a­tor Aikichi Kuboya­ma lat­er died. The pre­served boat is shown in a Tokyo muse­um. Voigt’s pho­to­graph iso­lates the orig­i­nal wood­en planks—not as illus­tra­tion, but as a field of evi­dence: grain, joins, patch­es, scrapes. The image holds an unusu­al opti­cal clar­i­ty and plane-true pre­ci­sion; detail ren­ders almost unre­al, invit­ing the eye to read sur­face as doc­u­ment. Mean­ing emerges from arrange­ment and inter­val, from the mea­sured plane of the boards. With­in Sabishii, the image keeps its dis­tance; it trusts mate­r­i­al to reg­is­ter time and impact, allow­ing a qui­et nar­ra­tive con­den­sa­tion with­out spec­ta­cle.

Lucky Drag­on No. 5

120 x 90 cm

Hah­nemüh­le Pho­to Rag Bary­ta

Halbe Dis­tanzrah­men
Edi­tion 5 +2 AP

Aki­habara Prizes (trip­tych)

Three pho­tographs of crane-game win­nings from Akihabara—small man­ga fig­ures bought or won in the arcades of the “elec­tric town.” At night, the same streets are worked by women in anal­o­gous cos­tumes, steer­ing passers­by into host­ess and themed bars, some­times with the sug­ges­tion of paid com­pan­ion­ship. The echo between mas­cot and per­son intro­duces a slight­ly seedy under­tone, not­ed from a delib­er­ate dis­tance. The works are framed with cir­cu­lar win­dows and pas­tel passep­a­rtouts, height­en­ing the toy-like dis­play and a pur­pose­ful kitsch sur­face.

Aki­habara

28 x 35 cm

Hah­nemüh­le Pho­to Rag Smooth

Passep­a­rtout col­ored

Halbe Dis­tanzrah­men

Edi­tion 8 +2 AP