Artist and performer Susanne Carl (born 1962) has been working on the photo series “Ich bin nicht auf dieser Welt” (I am not in this world) with photographer Bruno Weiß (born 1951) since 2012.

The approach taken in this photo series is always the same, yet the result always different. Susanne Carl makes masks and uses them to bring to life a vast number of characters in performative actions, with the help of her sizable collection of costumes and wigs. Together with photographer Bruno Weiß, Carl then looks for the right setting for each of her orchestrations, which may be a hotel, a museum, a parking lot or a soccer stadium.

The resulting photographs are as surprising as they are moving, carefully staged and composed portraits of roles that invariably spawn stories, sad, funny and cryptic stories. An angel washes his feet in innocence, a cleaner in a classroom dreams of going out into the big wide world, a contemporary allegory of longing, or an elegant lady with an awfully sensitive eye for detail shapes each and every blade of grass with a pair of hand pruners, a modern Sisyphus.

Now, for the first time Susanne Carl and Bruno Weiß are presenting a selection of works from their photo series in the exhibition space at Institut für moderne Kunst in the ’studio des zumikon‘. “Although the figures are wearing masks, they seem strangely familiar to us and sometimes we can even see ourselves in them”, writes Thomas Heyden in the catalog accompanying the show.

By shifting realities, Susanne Carl and Bruno Weiß open up new spaces of significance and create something extraordinary, namely, they bring wonderment and amazement back into the world.

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