Untitled

Björn Kämmerer has a knack for finding objects that, submitting to his sly structuralist practice, become new discoveries for audiences. Material subjects rendered initially abstract through blackbox isolation, brief and startling motion, and other optical and phenomenological disorientation, the first encounter with a film like Untitled is one of uncertainty of sight. Stabbing horizontal colors silently slash out across the screen, tilt, disappear and reappear as a new color. A widescreen movie par excellence, it tests the horizontal limits of the screen, the colored stripes thinner and wider, defining and delineating the aspect ratio: A black screen shredded into candy-colored ribbons. A moment later comes recognition - Untitled´s subject is Venetian blinds, variously opened to and shut against the black background, their colors changing, rhythmically turned inside out and outside in - and with that recognition comes humor, pleasure and play. A cinema icon forever associated with noir, casting sculptural shadows into rooms of sinister import, Kämmerer takes away the blinds´ primarily function as a veil hiding private human sins and - absent the subject of what they are exposing or obscuring - recasts their abilities and qualities as delightful in their own right. These torqued strips only cast shadows on themselves. Their shortened depth, rippling shape and colorful abstraction tease at the vibrant visual expressiveness of a household object meant to be seen through or to halt vision itself. Untitled is a strip tease with the strip being both the tease and the reveal. There´s no nude or murdered body behind the blinds; in fact, there is no "behind" at all, for we don´t know whether we´re on the inside or the out. Long relegated to window dressing, finally blinds have their moment in the spotlight. (Daniel Kasman)