Sortiment

Cropping, details, fraction - the main features of the photographs of Susanne Huth's new series "Sortiment" present a fragmented perception of public space in Berlin Mitte. Through close-ups, she draws attention to elements of the city which we, when striding across it, only register as elusive and ephemeral. Huth juxtaposes two different groups of motifs: first, details of the window displays of fashionable boutiques; second, the blown-up graphic structures of youth counter-culture stickers. Depending on the area of focus, however, she approaches her objects in different ways: on luxury articles, the camera gaze remains a distant perspective, which, through the reflections in the glass, simultaneously makes visible parts of the exterior space. The process of graphically appropriating the stickers on lampposts and street signs is a haptic one; it selects a segment of the palimpsest-like layering of the stickers and reproduces this in the studio. These two approaches to the photographic material are indicative of the thematic orientation of the series. With her radius of movement, the artist assumes the prototypical role of someone who does not cross the threshold to the interior of the high-end boutiques, but as a result is a more conscious receiver of the references to subcultural spaces. Both elements which are found in the immediate vicinity of one another, represent two contrasting facets of urban reality: while the expensive boutiques stand for the differentiation of a particular product range aimed solely at affluent customers, the stickers use the last remaining free space in the city to provide information about party locations, protest meetings and other events to a target audience of young urban creatives. In this series, the objects of the consumer world offered for sale in the display windows and the typographical elements found in public space overlap and occasionally enter into symbiosis; in any case, they represent two aspects of the commercial penetration of cities.

Christina Natlacen