Seeing is one of the most instinctive of acts, requiring adjustments of muscle and mental responses too quick to ever comprehend. That unconscious process is the preoccupation of British artist Josephine Pryde, in a show that mixes new photographic series with older work and sculpture.
Distinct eye-shaped lens filters have been used across scenes of infrastructural decay in the series ‘Potholes’, with ugly, water-filled puddles leaking out into deformed irises. It has an unsettling interplay: are we looking at it, or is the eye spying back at us? This is in no way an easy show, and the press text doesn’t make it any better. There are no clear interpretations, just deadpan provocations around perception, interpretation and consciousness.
Upstairs, things get a bit lighter but no less obscure; a dead squid is draped across the moulded plastic of an aeroplane toilet, its tendrils hanging down like streams of water. Again, there’s little to go on, just the feeling that there’s a joke you haven’t been given the punchline to.
At times it’s frustrating and you may find yourself wandering around, wondering about what you’re missing. Which may be the point – open your eyes, think about it! Failing that, join a free guided tour on the weekend. ★★★
- Haus am Waldsee, Argentinische Allee 30, Zehlendorf, ‘How Frequency The Eye’, through Aug 18, details.
