Fährten - Andreas Fux

Tracks – Andreas Fux
Photographs Spanning Three Decades

Tracks can be read in two directions: both coming and going.
And so sits the young man - as naked as an unwritten book -
on a pile of old stones. Once they were useful for something,
and will be again, somehow, sometime - perhaps then when
the youth shifts his gaze from the distance down to his hands
that, likely unaware, he already rubs.

At first glance the events of the last three decades have
formed one country from two, whereby one seems to have
dwindled away, while the other has expanded swiftly. The
same street corner before and after the fall of the Wall would
illustrate this change memorably. Superficially. In Fux's work,
these divisions reveal themselves in a very particular way. As
if he wanted to sunbathe, a man has lain down on train
tracks, crossties to the right and the left of him. At any
moment the tracks may begin to vibrate, the train may
approach him, but until then he remains in his balancing act.
Whether he is resigned or coolly confident, we are not able to
determine.

Another moment between the day before yesterday and the
day after tomorrow: a heap of rubble in front of a weathered
facade - accumulated past events, but without cutesy
nostalgia, no hidden little treasures. And a young man,
having taken a running start, leaps over it - practically flying -
arms and legs spread wide. Where he will land, we do not
know.

Matthias Frings