Albane Lamoril
A room in memory of my neighbor, Horst Richter, in Berlin. He died last year at the age of 76 years old. Nobody came to pick up his stuff, so some men in charged of cleaning the flat came. They let me enter the flat and pick up what I wanted.
I found pictures of Horst, about his life. Many pictures, that I found in the family albums, were taken around a certain table, always in the same room. We can see the people getting older, the seasons passing by with the Christmas tree behind them, the couple together, still young, the husband photographing his old wife while she is sewing by a small lamp, her taking care of her grandchildren, always around this same table.
Horst Richter was a sympathetic old neighbor. He always was smiling and mumbeling something I didn’t really understand.
The door of the installation room keeps closed. I hung a mirror on it, I dug a hole in it to look through, then we can see the room. This door viewer is maybe a way to remind my intrusion in Horst privacy by entering his flat after his death, even though I didn’t knew him very much. Behind the door I hung another mirror which faces another one on the wall. They are reflecting each other in the infinity. There is a marble stele, a big bouquet, an old clock mechanism, a portrait picture of Horst, an excerpt from “The invention of solitude” from Paul Auster, written on the wall.
First, the personal pictures of Horst, of his family. The memory of this life, of this man who will be forgotten from this world soon.
Secondly, the mirrors are trying to arouse an interaction between the story of this man and the spectators. What do we see in this man of ourselves? The excerpt from Paul Auster’s book is questioning this, in the other way round.
