To Protect Us From What We Seek | Kommunale Galerie Berlin | Berlin | 2022

In her drawings and sculptural works, Lucia Kempkes examines the meaning of landscape as a projection surface for our memories and longings. Her work revolves around the fascination of adventure, the search for physical challenges, but also the need for security and refuge. To do this, she explores the properties of a wide variety of materials such as carpet, stone paper and Gore-Tex film and creates an environment that turns the exhibition space itself into a landscape structure.
The view of the mountains is one of the oldest motifs in art history, which continues across time and genres into the digital world of images. Whether in classical painting or as the standard background on our laptop, the associations associated with it range from departure, calm or hope to thrill or life-threatening threat. However, the respective feeling is less determined by the specific location than by the feeling of a home, a space of emotional belonging and stability.
In this tension between everyday life and the rush of the unknown, between security and borderline experiences, Lucia Kempkes develops a multi-layered and playful work that repeatedly makes the change of perspective and the transformation of ideas and materials the theme. Her works are a debate about a contemporary representation of landscape and at the same time touch on many questions that concern us in the pandemic as well as with regard to climate change and social inequality. Who has the privilege of feeling wanderlust? What is the difference between calculated and existential risk? Is travel a limited resource and how is it distributed?

Maxie Fischer
Curator