Sascha Weidner’s poetic and emotionally charged images, which create a radical and subjective visual world are shaped by perception, longing, and coded symbolism. Weidner’s images, writes Inka Schube in Intermission II, are populated with faces covered by hoods, androgynous bodies, energetic ankles, and hands seeking images: between sky, water, earth, forest, and stone. She continues, “As if nothing were fixed by gravity, no up and no down. As if there were no borders beyond the troubled paradises. Let us think differently, be different.” Weidner’s work was meticulously composed. He took great care to thoughtfully position light and shadow to accentuate the, as he says, “often unreal, sometimes deeply evocative atmosphere of reality”. He said that he didn’t like so-called clean exhibitions. Works from different series and diverse formats were combined in non-linear and asymmetric configurations that covered entire walls. Weidner used his images as codes, combining them into something bigger. Unrelated, individual images became part of a grander overarching narrative. Viewers were invited to form their own associations between the images and discover unexpected connections. He wanted the pictures to explode on the wall, “like cosmic fireworks”.
Inka Schube identified human existence projected into beauty as the fundamental theme of all the works of Sascha Weidner. She saw a quiet melancholy pervading his images, yet also an ardour that rejoices in life. High and low, back and forth. Objects are often turned upside down or around in Weidner’s work, either physically, like the toppled cars he photographed for the series ‘Beauty Remains’, or the drop of water shown in Code II, or later in framing, such as in Hand II where water and body meet on equal terms, vertical lines touching. Weidner’s protagonists often avert their eyes or hide under the sheets, like in Pol II. They remain in their own world, yet allow the viewer in. A touch of the surreal, a hint of the mystical, which permeates Weidner’s pictorial world. The how or what is left unsaid, an open question for the viewer to answer.
Sascha Weidner (1974–2015) lived and worked in Belm and Berlin, Germany. His work has been widely exhibited, including at FOAM (Netherlands), C/O Berlin, Galerie Conrads (Germany), the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, and the Photofestival Knokke (Belgium). His photographs are held in numerous public and private collections, including the Berlinische Galerie (Berlin), Collection IBB (Berlin), the Alexander Tutsek Foundation (Munich), Museum Folkwang (Essen), Sprengel Museum (Hanover), and the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection (New York).