‘The metropolis as a playground for ideas’ The bigger the city, the higher the buildings. The higher the buildings, the longer the lines. Lines are forming grids and the grids are making patterns. Silhouettes are silhouetted against the patterns. Anonymous forms. Are you watching or are you being watched? Are your eyes drawing new lines? Up on the buildings? Or does your stature stand out against the city? Perspective is the central theme of Deep / Flat, an exhibition which brings together new work by Martine Stig and Stephan Keppel. How does our way of looking determine what we see? Do we zoom in or do we watch from a distance? And how does the way we, observer, determine what we see? Does our glance add new layers? Or does it make it more abstract? Does it expand or distort? Both artists use the metropolis as a playground for their ideas/ concepts. The big city, anonymous or almost too ecognizable, is the setting for various ways of observing. Where Keppel questions our current view, Stig speculates a new way of looking. Where Keppel invites you to re-evaluate the well known, just by looking at it from a different angle, Stig explores an entirely new territory; a world we do not know yet but that already exists in today’s world. Increasingly, our perspective is the view from above. The bird’s eye view, the God-shot. The perspective of a drone or a satellite. The glance that oversees. Martine Stig speculates about a future in which ‘en profile’ and ‘en-face’ are making room for a view from above. A future in which we unlimitedly observe, from all different angles. And in which we are being observed from all angles. Will there still be a place to hide in that future? And what do the eyes see that are following us? The glance that Stig evokes seems to be indifferent. The glance records but does not look. Classical portraits choose the satellite perspective and reduce the portraits to lines. Pedestrians are spied on in a way that doesn’t convey any interest at all. But no matter how indifferent the camera is, the observer is not. No matter how unwilling the camera bounces back and forth between the frames of the image, the viewer looks focused. The observer investigates, asks questions. Interprets the viewer. His glance makes characters of the passers, projects stories on streets, it continues where the camera stops. The glance of the camera, a look without intention, is filled out by the observer as sneaky. The look is limitless, but stressed. Stephan Keppel also plays with an objective view. He removes his images from the artist; he does not create but collects. He is the archivist who sorts; color samples, suggestions for material, examples of patterns and the lines of a city. He collects separate elements, parts of a larger whole; a deconstructed city. The archivist has no opinion of his own. He is in service of the archive. But when you see the images assembled as a collection, you see the choices the artist made. Then you see a vision which is not indifferent but an intensely curious one. Not anonymous and common, but specific and personal. Seeing the images together, not the separate elements but the possible whole, then you are becoming aware of the perspective of the artist. The artist’s vision does not register but constructs. The vision dismantles and reassembles. The deconstruction and the construction itself are part of the process, just as the exhibited is part of the exhibition. Here too the spectator does the work. Where Stig invites the viewer to give his own load to an objective view, does Keppel ask you to stack and fold together, to merge and to expand, to assemble the city together. The opportunities are endless. Basje Boer