Interviewing ornaments

20 contact sheets
chromogenic prints, paper, glas layered on a wooden table

It concerns a series of photographs that Pilko started taking during walks in The Hague. During these walks she encountered basal compositions in the consructed environment, such as patterns for instance, that might not be instantly noticeable when passing by, but that receive a certain meaning without losing their abstract quality. In Inteviewing Ornaments we see these compositons highlighted, framed, or duplicated.

This method is characteristic of Pilko. As in previous works she plays with the impossibility to capture things in a literal way. What she shows is specific and yet it is not about a story, not about the content of the image, but about looking itself. She refers to the writer W.G. Sebald who also walked at similiar places through The Hague: " In looking we feel, how things look at us and understand, that we are not here to permeate the Universe, but to be permeated by it."

Everything looks at you, according to Pilko, and is continually moving. This is why her images often slide to and fro in the black image plane, seem to find their place and then do not after all. What we see are both very rational shapes and spatial or architecutral associations. They are given space in the photographs and refer to a possibly different logic.

(text from the exhibition guide)

Installation view (close up) of Interviewing ornaments at Return on Invest, Stroom, The Hague, 2012.