Cornelia Hediger at KlompChing Gallery

As if I didn't hate missing art openings in New York, I'm totally depressed I can't be at Cornelia Hediger's opening tomorrow night, September 10 at KlompChing Gallery in Dumbo. My friend Darren Ching and his wife Debra opened the gallery less than a year ago and thus far they have picked some amazing photographers to debut with. I first came across Cornelia's photographs a few years ago in a catalog from the Center for Photography at Woodstock. I agree many photographers have used this technique of piecing multiple images together employing the grid to create a larger more complete whole however few if any photograph themselves. In addition Hediger infuses her photographs with an aspect of performance further drawing me in to this other world of hers and contemplating my Doppilganger.

KLOMPCHING GALLERY is pleased to announce the exhibition Doppelgänger, by the Swiss artist Cornelia Hediger. There will be a reception for the artist on September 10, from 6pm to 8pm. This is the artist’s solo gallery debut at the gallery and in New York City.

In this richly colorful series, the persona of the artist is the central figure, performing a psychological struggle with her doppelgänger — a fictional ghostly double of a living person, widely understood as sinister and a harbinger of bad luck. These striking images will amuse, challenge, intrigue and captivate the viewer.

Each image is constructed from six to nine photographs, employing a device which is increasingly prevalent in contemporary photography — that of the tableau-vivant, in which a pictorial narrative is carefully choreographed into a single image. Through the presentation of different characters, Hediger explores notions of the uncanny, the conscious / unconscious and moral ambiguity — perceptively juxtaposed with a fine-drawn level of dry humor.

Hediger’s photo assemblages present stories that are also fascinating for their obliqueness, enabling the viewer to invest some of their own narrative interpretations. Her storytelling demonstrates more than a hint of literary and psychological theory, and it is this that makes her photographs all the more compelling. These internalised depictions of illusory spaces and scenarios oblige us to draw comparisons to the work of Claude Cahun, Francesca Woodman and even Hans Bellmer.