Art:walk-Festival: grotesk.group: Better
It doesn't start with an image, but with a thought. Original photographs from the shoot form the starting point of the exhibition. They show people as individuals before change becomes visible. They are accompanied by an auditory layer of fragmented, confused thoughts spoken by a male and a female voice. These voices do not stand for roles, but for inner states:
Doubt, entitlement, control, desire. They overlap, contradict each other, repeat themselves. This is where the mental space arises from which all other levels emerge.
The visual evolution of Better develops from this inner state in several phases.
The original image is increasingly processed, expanded and moved. What begins as a subtle change develops into an exaggerated, controlled and ultimately chaotic visual language. The boundary between man and machine, between self-image and external image begins to blur. The exhibition does not follow a classic linear narrative, but an inner logic of escalation. With each phase, the image moves further away from its origins and at the same time from a clear identity. Optimisation is not shown as an improvement, but as a process of deterioration: the more is controlled, the less remains tangible.
Better does not focus exclusively on one gender. Instead, the exhibition poses the question of how much our ideas of body, strength, attractiveness and authenticity are shaped by external images and media narratives and how these expectations are internalised.
The voices, images and movements leave open who they belong to. This is precisely where their power lies.
As the exhibition progresses, language becomes rarer, movement colder, the imagery more technical and abstract. The initial individuality gives way to distance.
In the end, what remains is a state in which human choice is barely perceptible. Better confronts visitors not with answers, but with a mirror. The exhibition does not ask how we can become better, but what we lose when we no longer know who we are without optimisation.