"Hochsitz 48 Ringgau/Hessen"

pigment-based inkjet print

Bertram Kober's series "Raised Blind" came into being between 2001 and 2005. His carefully calculated selection of the picture details and the similar lighting during the exposures allows the viewer to feel the cloudy climate in the deserted landscapes. The coolly descriptive diction makes it possible to study the "architecture" of the raised blinds, their diversity and their vibrancy that communicates strength as well as fragility. Aside from mobile constructions there are also throne-like variations with which the hunters rise above their territory in two senses of the word. There is a definite lack of coziness among the hunters' sometimes rather strange looking, home-made observation towers. Observers looking for the traces of game won't find them, they will rather find themselves in this place and: nowhere in the landscapes will they find the protective forest. The, at first, seemingly sculptural aesthetic of the raised blinds in the pictures transforms into feelings of danger and being threatened. Questions about reasonableness show up in stead of cheery sentiments of "nothing in the world is like the joy of hunting" – as is sung in the Carl Maria von Weber opera "Der Freischütz". Well known things seem strange all of the sudden. The artist thus achieves a direct emotional effect. The works not only fascinate, they unsettle and sensitize in equal measure.
Christine Dorothea Hoelzig