CHRISTOPH KELLER Christoph Keller, Introduction | Page 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. 6 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