“Karen Irmer’s photographic visual world is one that seems to suggest that it is itself the only reminiscence of it. Laminated with Dibond aluminium so that the unrecognisable darkened or diffused nebulous grey tones of the near decomposed motives leaves the viewer troubled by the impossibility of knowing. We find out how to progressively achieve the anticipation, to determinedly find something to see, and indeed to finally see something. Yet Karen Irmer guides us to the limit of the perceivable and reduces her visual mediums to a minimum: we believe that we can imagine something more. Here the artist leads us without any hint of moral strictness, like how she often implies a total denial of the (printed) image;
quite to the contrary her gesture of the well-measured breaking of the visual and known norms seem to be applied in an exquisitely sensitive manner. What is left now is the possibility that she can devote herself truly and concentrate on the presumed few that actually exist. In this way Karen Irmer is able to question our pre-conceived visual notions of our intuitive comparisons and quick classifications. Her answer to the incredibly numerous messages in images decided by our everyday impressions lies in the emphasis on particular subtle qualities of themes, whose presence can only be perceived as traces.”
Christoph Stolz
Karen Irmer
Karen Irmer