Das Innere

The latest work of Alexander Binder, Das Innere, is another journey into a dualistic world of the artist, in which colourful, idyllic images with the characteristic rainbow diffraction effect are interwoven with pitch black-and-white images filled with gloom. As in Dante's Divine Comedy, which Binder often cites as an inspiration, the author leads us one time to gates of hell another time to gates of paradise. Das Innere itself has a double meaning in German: it is an interior of an object or a building but also the interior of a man, reflecting its anxiety, surging emotions and existential fears. Unlike in his previous works, where the scene is set in mysterious northern forest (the photographer often refers to his childhood in the Black Forest), this time he follows the steps of the XIXth century German artists to explore the southern Europe. All the photos from the series presented at Lookout Gallery were shot over three years during several trips to Italy, Sicily and the Aeolian Islands. Spending days on observations of volcanic wasteland, the movement of magma and "elementary particles", Binder creates abstract images detached from the recognizable places and time, which thus gain symbolic meaning. The inside of the volcanic earth and the raging magma spewed out to the surface in a form of smoke or a red-hot lava becomes the metaphor for a restless human soul. Dreamlike images of calm sea and clouds-layered southern sky brings temporary peace. Das Innere confirms Binder's fascination with nature. We see it in a variety of disguises, from the most prosaic grasses, plants and illuminated skies, to lightning and deadly lava fumes. In the pictures we also find the symbols so characteristic for his works: animal motives (the zine accompanying the project opens with the image of a cat's big eyes), skulls, masks, cobwebs. All these effects add to the atmosphere of the images that sometimes recall a memory of a nightmare, sometimes of bliss. (Text: Katarzyna Borucka, Lookout Gallery, Warsaw)