Sven Johne  Following the Circus

In his expansive series of photographs Sven Johne captures empty sites of circus tents in East German villages shortly (a day) after their departure. The abandoned venues, often lawns where one can still see the big circle of stamped down grass that the tent has left behind, open up hihgly significant voids. In circus animals and humans appear bigger than nature because they do things that they naturally would not be able to do. Indicating the society of the spectacle in its absence on the one hand, Johne's photographs are on the other hand metaphors for the continuously failing project of Enlightenment.

Another series in the same exhibition, titles "African Roses" shows bunches of roses photographed in a flower wholesale market in Hamburg. They traveled there all the way from Africa and are now blooming too early to be sold in flower shops. Consequently they land right in the dump containers of the market. They made a long journey to be sold without in fact ever reaching the chain of consumption.