The exhibition is driven by the differences between images, still and moving, the trace of an absence that is originary to those images. Approaching images like an editor – part detective, part cinephile – Stephan investigates how images collide and collude, multiply and subtract.
In her own words: “As an artist-filmmaker-editor, I work with images. I think in images. But mostly, I think about the relation between images, about what happens in-between images. Is it an addition or a collision, or even a lack? How far can the gap between two images stretch in order to open a space for other images to dive in and let the viewer’s imagination enter the narrative? How does one capture these invisible images?”
Produced between 2010 and today, the works that make up On Never Being Simply One fall between two of Stephan’s major film projects – The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosny (2011) and the ongoing Memories for a Private Eye (2015-). They present Stephan’s obsessive examination of the relationships between still and moving images, documentary and fiction, death and presence.
