Michaela Coffee Break, 2009
Series of 6 c-prints, each 43 x 32 cm

Images courtesy of ANNETTE KELM / Johann König, Berlin

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What at a first glance may appear simple or even easily comprehensible is beginning to look weird and profound when taking a closer look. It always seems as if something inappropriate or absurd has crept into the pictures. The cool transparency remains deceiving and we ask ourselves as viewers: Do we see too much or too little? What do we see at all? All these questions remain without answer. With her crude assemblies German artist ANNETTE KELM is creating a certain irritation, which instils curiosity and the search for links.

The act of looking at these images is more an act of reading, of searching out the differences among them. Unphotographed seconds pass between one shot and the next, allowing KELM to bring up photography’s complex relationship with time while simultaneously eluding it, by making pictures that both arrest time and show it passing, if elliptically. – by KIRSTY BELL for Frieze

KELM works traditionally; her photographs are taken with an analogue middle and large-format camera and are individually handmade. She produces both individual and series of works with individual motifs and, in her exhibitions, shows a combination of photographs that refuse to submit to a single reading of a theme or concept.

ANNETTE KELM‘s work is actually on view at ILLUMInations during the Venice Biennale until November 27, 2011