LEMPERT, Jochen - Drift

"The exhibition also includes works that Lempert created during his stay at the Villa Massimo in Rome last year.
They also include the photo sequence of the active Stromboli volcano: a black cloud rises, changes its shape and slowly fades away
until the bright horizon can be seen against the dark foreground and the smoke-blackened sky.
Jochen LEMPERT chose it for his artist book, which, with the terse title 'Drift', alludes to those forces inside the earth that can lead to volcanic eruptions.

This natural phenomenon is currently having an amazing impact on our everyday life, in which airplanes are a matter of course. 200 years ago,
a motif of the sublime was seen in a volcano such as Etna, Stromboli or Vesuvius: the moment of horror and horror, as if looking into a pit of hell with the active volcano,
can be translated from a safe distance into an aesthetic experience of the sublime . If you approach these volcanic pictures right away,
you will be able to see how the smoke particles emerge on the photo paper so that you stand in the ash rain with the photographer and the immediacy
of the impressive moment can be felt. (Barbara Engelbach, April 2010)