Judith Stenneken
Judith Stenneken is a German artist working in photography, video and installation. She is based in New York City and Berlin. Stenneken holds a MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts New York (2013). She since had solo exhibitions with Galerie f5.6 in Munich (2016), Benhadj & Djilali Galerie in Berlin (2017), Flowers Gallery in New York (2018) and Marshall Gallery in Los Angeles (2022). She has produced two self-published photo books: LAST CALL (2010) – a project documenting the slow closure of Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport – and ILLUMINATE NATURALLY IN DARKNESS (2017) – a poetic dive into a state of transition. The images that will be shown during The Gallery Club are from her latest publication ‘A Mountain Is Only A Slow Wave’.
For ‘A Mountain is Only a Slow Wave’ Stenneken returned to a place she knows well: the historic Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. The structure itself is a testament to continuous transformation. She documented its closure in 2008 and revisited it in 2016/17 after being partially converted into a refugee camp. The color portraits in this book were photographed in collaboration with asylum seekers from Syria and Afghanistan, most of whom lived in the airport during this time.
When Stenneken looks at these portraits, she remembers individuals who touched her with their ability to remain open and compassionate in the face of radical change and great uncertainty. The remaining photography reflects an ongoing reckoning with change as the main topic in her work. In times when change feels overwhelmingly like loss, photographing it as transformation, as a continuous way of becoming, reminds her that nothing is set in stone and even a mountain is only a slow wave.
Stenneken finds inspiration for her work in a variety of scientific and cultural sources; from Eastern philosophies to neuroscience and quantum physics.
Justus de Rode
The work of Justus de Rode started with the demand for means to investigate both the outside and the inside world. While growing up surrounded by his father’s paintings, the camera turned out to be the solution for De Rode. Justus mostly intuitively captures what resonates in nature, it is only the bearer of an underlying and personal theme.
‘Mycelium’ is a publication about the shared universe of father and son; a visual language as a bridge in a growing distance caused by Alzheimer’s disease. The project arose from an attempt to bridge the distance between De Rode and his father. Where ratio and speech distorted more and more, visual language held up. During joint forest walks, De Rode started using this as a tool for communication by means of photography. Through a shared fascination for organic structures and forms, father and son managed to get closer, and his illness seemed further away.
During these walks, De Rode aimed to see the world through his father’s eyes. The resulting black and white images are a combination of an imagination of his father’s gaze and De Rode’s story. Taking on his gaze allowed De Rode to better understand his father and the world he more and more enters. To get an even better image of this world, De Rode decided to ask his father to paint over some of his prints. This sub-series, called ‘A Glimpse into the Mind’, offered De Rode a direct glimpse into his father’s experience and universe, where forms take on new meaning and colors come to life.
All works are available for purchase
