In another work for a less gray but in other ways not more inviting town – Langenhagen near Hannover – Karin Sanders has repapered advertising columns with faux stucco wallpaper, in order to equip a negative space – the wall will always stay in outer wall – with the characteristics of an indoor space.
This work not only draws attention to the omnipresence of advertisement columns within the city (just because for once they are white), but also makes us aware that inside and outside, interior and exterior, are less clearly delimited than we are likely to believe and could even overlap. It is always an investigation of the area between the front and the back of things.

 It is a point in favor of Sander’s work that the results are often humorous and sometimes have a certain aura – for Karin Sander’s art goes beyond the purely conceptional element of investigating and allows another reality to appear – which has always been the unredeemed promise of art itself.
The art of Karin Sander shows an abundance of variety – surprising and equally amazing, considering the thrift of her intrusions upon the given situations, the rooms, and the things. This also follows from the fact that any observer of Sander’s work is always referred to his or her own situation in a very specific way and will only then be able to profit when moving, turning, walking further away or coming closer.

Even though the work of Karin Sander deals with the superficiality of things, it unfolds only to those who are willing and able to be perceptive and aware – not to those casually walking by and merely looking. In this sense, the highest degree of superficiality is a standard directed with precision and subtlety at the investigation of the surface, i.e., the visible. Karin Sander provides undercoatings for looking beyond the back of things: the closer you examine their front, the more permeable and translucent they get.

Harald Welzer

(Translation Eva Dempewolf)

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