CHRISTOPH KELLER Christoph Keller, Introduction | Página 6

Yet apart from the images themselves, the
construction of the apparatuses, their development
and subsequently their registry in 1995 as patent—a
deliberate artistic gesture to inscribe the work into the
patent office as if it were a museum—were crucially
integral parts of Keller’s project.
In the documentation of his projects, another aspect
of time is encapsulated: the photographs act as
records of an artistic project, thus implicitly articulating
in-between-spaces and constructing a narrative
logic. The photographs introduce additional layers
of meaning that supplement the installations and
stand alone as coherent work. Thus, for example, the
act of transferring the stump of a Roman tree into a
gallery context is encapsulated in a suite of images
that far exceeds mere documentation and becomes
a charged sign of historical, social and artistic
transformation.
Chemtrails-Project (1-3), 2006, signed, numbered & dated,
3 works on paper, 72,7 x 103 cm (framed) (CK 162)
Keller has described his work as “offene
Wahrnehmungsvorschläge” (open proposals for
perception). His research and investigation into a
cultural context of specialized pockets of expertise
remains free of value judgment. Knowledge is
transmuted without relinquishing its richness,
ambivalence, contradictions, and complexity. Works
reach into the past and the future, invoking its
contexts rather than proposing a hegemonic authorial
position and closure. Neither didactic nor tied to any
ideological position, the openness of this approach is
part of a practice that entails a lived open-endedness
of interpretation, continuously accruing additional
meaning.
Ceppo Sradicato (series of black and white photographs),
2019, gelatin silver print on Ilford warmtone paper,
38 x 56,5 cm each (unframed, 7 parts) (CK 273)
Other photographic projects, such as Keller’s
appropriation of archival material installed in gridded,
formal arrangements, or his cinematic compilations,
invoke an important aspect of structuralist linguistic
analysis: the repetition signals to the viewer that
raw matter is being transformed, given shape and
meaning. While the ordering function of the grid as
formal display of images of “Chemtrails”, for example,
or photos of US embassies around the world suggests
a rationalist approach, the conspiratorial content of
the images runs counter to rationality and resists the
imposition of order. Creating a subtle tension, these
works make palpable both the violence and the
instability of classifications.
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Verbal/Nonverbal, 2010, Single-channel video HDV,
Duration: 20 min
The observer becomes part of the experimental
set-up of Keller’s works. Engaged as active
intellectual inquirer, he or she is sometimes made
complicit in positions of power or loss of control:
posed as ostensibly scientific observer, judgments