Pauline Hafsia M’barek - Membrāne

In the organizer's words:

A white sheet is not just empty. A sheet is a matted, organic fiber fleece or a sea of red, green and blue light-emitting diodes. A leaf is a sensitive projection surface, a skin, a probe and a moving recording medium. A leaf can be an opaque window and a space of infinite excessive demands. A leaf is constant questioning and being questioned.

A membrane is a thin layer of fabric that separates and mediates two spaces. Based on the etymological link between human (skin) and non-human corporeality (parchment), the exhibition Membrāne by Pauline Hafsia M'barek focuses on the blank sheet as a semi-permeable materiality and discursive figure of the in-between. Like a membrane, the sheet forms an osmotic contact surface that allows for constant processes of exchange and transformation between inside and outside.

Through various performative experiments and microscopic explorations, the artist examines the sheet as a porous medium or the paper as a liquid-solid materiality and exposes it to various transformations: Pages are touched by touch, affected by the atmosphere or marked by falling rain. Papers are created from dust or liquefy.

In a constellation of various video projections, paper works and objects, this exhibition shows the groping, back and forth flowing search movements and processes of their own creation. This opens up a space of analog-digital micro-phenomena, of fluttering restlessness and gossamer touches. Approaches to a pictoriality that repeatedly slips away and remains precarious.