Unexpected juxtapositions play an important role in Surrealism – so much so that they can be described as a foundational principle: “As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table,” as Lautréamont so pithily put it. In 1924, André Breton quoted that line in the First Surrealist Manifesto. The surprise encounter between otherwise entirely unrelated things gives rise to a something else – a brain-teasing conundrum that fires our imagination and takes our thoughts in unexpected directions.

The juxtaposition of works by the photographer Kai Bornhöft and still lifes by the painter Frank Tornow results in a similar interplay. Moreover, here we have to adjust our expectations to what looks at first glance like a reversal of roles: while we tend to think of photography as objective and realistic, here these assumptions come under scrutiny, as it is in Tornow’s paintings that we can instantly identify the objects depicted. Conversely, the freedom to invent, usually conceded to painting, seems to define the imagery of Bornhöft’s works. It is only upon closer inspection that the subjects of his analogue photographs – sometimes the product of repeated transfer-copying – can be identified. 

The juxtaposition of the two artists’ works foregrounds these distinctive qualities of their respective media. Tornow’s exquisite painting technique, which brings to mind Chardin, in conjunction with Bornhöft’s eye for the enigmatic aspects of the seemingly trivial gives rise to something else, something other, that remains concealed as if behind a veil. At the same time (and perhaps precisely because of this), it sharpens our perception, even when we look at other works. This kind of “powerful interaction” shifts our cognitive perspective in surprising and counterintuitive ways that unseat the orderly clockwork universe, as in quantum physics – or in Surrealism.

A special exhibition of the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin