The artworks of Carla Åhlander and Aaron Amar Bhamra invite us to pause. To be slow with a space; to dwell in the air of a space, that “border between everything and nothing” to quote Aaron, be this one transformed through spatial gestures (Aaron) or one made newly available through photographic series (Carla). 

A conversation through artistic affinities, Holding Places has emerged through the artist’s shared interests, be these formal or conceptual. From pedestrian refuse to walkways, here materials are approached in the most honest way, allowing the time and space held within certain subjects to move and migrate, naturally creating a “chain of associative thoughts” to quote Carla. The introduction of times had elsewheres into the gallery’s surround accentuates this sense of parallel motion. That is, this meeting creates a harmonious accord, a path beyond thresholds, where the sound of our own steps are welcomed.

On the face of things, the artworks in this exhibition speak in silence. But, as John Cage reminds us, “There is no such thing as silence”, silence begets sound. Indeed, as a generative noise, silence invites us not only to attune to all that is always already there (or not) but, as a physical state, silence establishes a room or place where the writ rules of fast action slowly transform inviting evocation.

Silence is a place which listens. An open and inviting pause (f)or breath.

The sense of conviviality at the heart of this exhibition is calm, its gestures subtly mucking-up the logistical management of time, allowing new points of departure, distances and horizons, to tip-toe all rose-footed into view. (Indeed, to leak out again.) This visioning does not imply loss or closure, as the differing creative bodies in Holding Places demonstrate. Here, split nutshells and sights of stairwells create a proximate space, all resonant, held open, a place unencumbered through shared thinking.

( on the occasion of this duo exhibition, Belmacz published an interview with the artists facilitated by the writer Maximiliane Leuschner. Click here to read the text. )

The work occasions (2023) is an ongoing piece that I started in 2020. It consists of walnuts that I collect once a year. The material itself has two states: the first one being its shape from the outside — a shell. The second state comes from the decision to break said shell into a fragile state that will not maintain its composure unless you hold it together very tightly. The work untitled (2024) presents, or pretends to present, the setting of an ongoing, unfinished exhibition. By freezing this setting, it creates a static moment in time which, at any moment, offers the possibility of someone entering the space. Perhaps just like walking into an image, or the exhibition documentation that someone could walk into.

– Aaron Amar Bhamra

The series Ascending a Staircase (2024) shows a person walking up a staircase. Based on a vague memory, this image thematises the concept of time (as linked to Aaron’s time-stopper objects). Rather than describing a movement, the series retells a moment in time broken up into fragments. By taking the fragments out of their chronological order and into a new constellation, the person appears trapped in the the never-ending loop of forever ascending the staircase. Instead of creating a flow of movement, the images attempt to disrupt time, and, in a sense, to contradict it. Perhaps the work is about time as a phenomenon, as a condition of life that defines us rather than the other way around. Of course, this photo series of someone walking up a flight of stairs remains forever tied to its art- historical references. In his famous futuristic painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912), Marcel Duchamp described a movement — of somebody (nude) walking down a staircase — inspired by the chronophotographic technique of that era, not least by the works of Eadweard Muybridge. Unlike Gerhard Richter’s painting Ema (Nude on a Staircase, 1966) of a woman walking down the stairs, towards us, naked, my “somebody” is walking up, not down, fully dressed. 

– Carla Åhlander

Artist biographies

Carla Åhlander (b. 1966, Sweden) uses photographic series to provoke inquisitive looking. Exploring social structures Carla’s photographs subtly reveal the memories and histories occluded by surface appearances.

Select exhibitions include: Carla Åhlander & Camilla Løw, Belmacz, London; Geister, SCOTTY Enterprise, Berlin; 9th Norwegian Sculpture Biennial, Oslo; Kunstmuseum Olten; Musée du château des ducs de Wurtemberg, Montbéliard; Biennial for Young Art, Bukarest; TENT – Center for visual arts, Rotterdam; 4th Bodensee Triennale, Zeppelin-Museum, Friedrichshafen/Palais Thurn und Taxis, Bregenz.

Carla has received the Artistic Research Grant from Berlin Senate Department for Culture and has previously been the recipient of artist residencies at Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani in Venice, Künstlerhaus Lukas, Ahrenshoop, among others. She has produced photographic works for public space in the underground station Schwartzkopffstraße in Berlin (After Work/nGbK), in Cologne (The Reclaim Award) and in Vienna (Prospective Sites, Europart).

Carla lives and works in Berlin, where she teaches Photography at Bard College Berlin and at the Berlin University of the Arts.

Aaron Amar Bhamra (b. 1992, Austria) often procures exhibition spaces that subtly expose their systematics and physical experience by incorporating imprints reminiscent of other spaces or past exhibitions. He occasionally uses recurring forms and materials, weaving a site of shifting personal and social archives.

Select exhibitions include: Deichtorhallen, Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg, Germany; Kevin Space, Vienna, Austria; Fotogalerie Wien, Vienna, Austria; MAUVE, Vienna, Austria; SYSTEMA, Marseille, France; Krinzinger Schottenfeld, Vienna, Austria; Galerie Le Carceri, Bolzano, Italy; Wien Museum MUSA; and PHILEAS Project Space, Vienna, Austria.

Aaron lives and works in Vienna. Since 2020, along with Monika Georgieva, he has run LAURENZ, an independent space in the city. Since 2021, he has worked at the Department of Expanded Museum Studies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.