It’s a long way from Los Angeles to Berlin. Abdulhamid Kircher now travels it regularly. The Berlin native commutes between continents. But also between worlds, physically and mentally. He grew up in LA, his mother moved there when he was little. She fled, or more accurately: her husband threatened her, and the move far away from Neukölln was a way out.
An explosive story
Abdulhamid Kircher is painfully open when it comes to the story of his small, imploded family. Anything else would be absurd, because the young artist visualizes the impressions of his personal journey in the presence of the past with full force in his pictures. The photographic series “Rotting from Within” hangs like a hidden object picture on a wall of the Carlier Gebauer Gallery – an exception in every respect.
Kircher, in his late twenties, is not really an artist for the gallery. Too young, too unknown, he graduated from the University of California San Diego in 2022. But one look at the sheer overwhelming impressions of “Rotting from Within” makes it immediately understandable why gallery owner Marie-Blanche Carlier immediately agreed to show him an exhibition after a meeting in New York. It is hard to stop studying Kircher’s tableau, which he always arranges precisely for each site from his own photographs, archive images and small artifacts.
Disturbing and tender
Some of the subjects are sudden and disturbing, others full of affection and tenderness. It is as if you were following the photographer live through the missing chapters of his life, which he has been trying to fill in gradually since 2014. What was it like in Berlin before he was eight years old? How did his father live after they fled to the States, and who is this man, with whom Abdulhamid Kircher had only a distant relationship for many years? The artist goes in search of clues, his tool is the camera, which records what he sees. And a lot more besides.
© Galerie carlier gebauer
Everything revolves around the father
You can see a leech on a finger or laundry hanging in the arcade. Someone seems to be tenderly holding a baby in their arms, but in fact it is the innards of an animal. A slaughtered sheep in another picture explains the motif; Abdulhamid Kircher traveled to Turkey to visit his paternal relatives to learn more about his own origins, but above all about the people around whom “Rotting from Within” is all about. His father’s biography is also relentlessly revealed. He dealt drugs for a long time and was in prison for attempted murder; what he is doing today is not entirely clear.
Photos from the hospital
His son circles around him incessantly with his camera, photographing the man sleeping, laughing with his girlfriend, in hospital or partying – as if his countless views could simultaneously reveal his innermost thoughts. Despite all his openness – or capitulation to the obsessive image maker – Kircher’s father ultimately reveals little of his feelings.
The documentary film “Still a Kid” by Maxi Hachem is playing in one room of the gallery. She accompanied the members of the family for a while, lets them talk alone or in dialogue, and captures a Berlin that is largely alien to the culture-loving gallery audience. Without voyeurism, the proximity to the actors is something of a privilege. Above all, however, the film explains the title of the series that was Kircher’s final project at university.
“Rotting from Within” is an attempt to make visible a trauma that spans generations. A migrant experience that is accompanied by loss and at the same time has to serve as an argument whenever the father fails to do something. He verbosely blames others for his biographical downfalls, the pressure from outside is a constant argument. The relationship with his son is also confusing, but in the end Abdulhamid Kircher actually owes him everything.
Formative years for the son
Facts and excuses are so tightly interwoven in the discussions that the son cannot possibly untangle the threads. Kircher was ultimately concerned with clarifying his own situation: to what extent he was part of those patriarchal experiences and what his father had taught him in his early, formative years.
It is an endless experiment. As diverse and (in a positive way) scattered as the presentation in the Carlier Gebauer Gallery. Abdulhamid Kircher creates a congenial depiction of the impressions that will continue to occupy him. The manifesto of a chaotic relationship that also resonates within oneself for a long time.