Martin Essl, Anaïs Horn

Martin Essl and Anaïs Horn are two Austrian artists who have both independently found a creative home in Paris.

In »Le Bateau ivre« (The Drunken Ship), Martin Essl refers to Arthur Rimbaud’s poem of the same name about human life as a dramatic voyage. In a poetic photo essay, Essl sketches the outlines of a city in transition and composes abstract and sometimes surreal photographs of the urban Parisian cityscape. Behind his colorful photographs, however, there are often visible traces of the dramas that have afflicted Paris. Essl’s sometimes enigmatic views of the city create an unusual image of the French metropolis.

Anaïs Horn’s work often moves in the space between narrative and fragment, memory and oblivion. She is showing two installations in which the central tension of her work becomes tangible: the interplay of presence and withdrawal, following traces of what is missing. In »APOUSIA«, countless photographs of wanted ads for missing cats hang in the semi-darkness of the room – fragile remnants of absence, fleeting traces of longing. Horn’s latest project »TALK TO ME« extends her ongoing investigation into the ghostly presence of objects and spaces, directly referencing Hervé Guibert’s »L’Image fantôme« (1981), which explores the elusive nature of photography – its ability to preserve and deceive, to animate and destroy.