With my sculptural objects, photographies, and installations, I create, rather than illustrate, fictitious, inaccessible spaces. These spaces represent the yet unknown space of human perception, emotion, and self.
The most important elements in my work are the mirror and the ellipse as its abstraction. I use the mirror as a symbol for the impossibility of self-knowledge, since the mirror, used in daily life as means of self-control, only reflects a highly deceptive image of oneself. Hence, the mirrors in my installations, being anti- or distorting mirrors, do not just reflect the outside world. I query the self, without simply referring to a naturalistic self-portrait. The motive of the ellipse takes this one step further: it stands as symbolic form for the mirror and its frame, no longer reflecting, but creating a possibility to approach an inaccessible unknown space inside. In its multifaceted iconography, the mirror is also used as metaphor for the three times; past, present, and future. Being in the present, I can look forward into the future, but at the same time see the past in the mirror. Another metaphor for my approach is the self as black box. In terms of systems theory, the self as system can be conceived as black box, which can be understood and analysed by observing inputs and outputs. Self-observation, be it by looking in a mirror or by exposing oneself to experimental situations, promises to open the box.
My installations, performances, video, and sound works are such fictitious experimental situations: they make emotions visible and show the blurred border between conscious action and unconscious intuition. Often, I use myself as test subject in my own experiments, but I can be replaced by a viewer, who is an important constituent of my work. In a scientific context, however, the participants or test subjects, do not get feedback about experimental results. I use experimental settings, but reverse the meaning for the participants. The viewer, at the same time being a test subject, independently evaluates the situation. Thus, at the expense of objectivity, art becomes a subjective but relevant experiment. I am trying to encircle and isolate the genuine portrait of the self.
Gesine Braun, 2018