CANDLES

Candles is a photographic essay by Tim Onderbeke. Fascinated by the sacred, ritual, and cerebral act of lighting a candle, the artist began collecting images of candles and candlesticks in an artistic or art-historical context. In Candles, Onderbeke
uses his own work and that of others to research what he calls "the colour of darkness," or negative space - a concept he borrowed from the Japanese writer and essayist Jun''ichiro Tanizaki. Tanizaki describes this intense experience he had in a larg
e, dark room of a Japanese tea house where the light of a few candles made the surrounding darkness feel tangible, as if it turned into monolithic matter. Onderbeke sees a burning candle as an implosion of architectural space where the centre is usua
lly kept empty. A burning candle in a dark room reverses that experience, and influences our perception of space, time and atmosphere.

In addition to Tim Onderbeke''s work, Candles also shows works of Martin Kippenberger, Anne Imhof, Juliaa
n Lampens, Le Corbusier, Peter Zumthor, Charlemagne Palestine, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Pieter De Bruyne, Damian O''Sullivan, and Robert Filliou. Wolfgang Becker, art historian and former director of the Ludwig Forum Aachen, wrote an accompanying text.