During her time at CERN, Rosa Menkman asked every scientist she spoke with one question:

“Imagine you could obtain an 'impossible' image of any object or phenomenon that you think is important, with no limits on spatial, temporal, energy, signal/noise or cost resolutions. What image would you create? (the answer can be a hypothetical image of course!)”

Rosa developed the BLOB to function as a virtual home for her collection of im/possible images during the pandemic, when all galleries were closed. But now, the im/possible images exhibition at Lothringer 13 has become a real space actualisation of the virtual BLOB.

The im/possible images show adopts the term ‘latent image space,’ and uses it as a metaphoric, expanded concept. In analogue photography, the latent image space is created when a photosensitive material has been exposed, but has not gone through the process of development yet. It is the space that has been touched by light, but that is not showing its trace evidence - the image - yet.

In the exhibition, the latent image is an imaginary space, which involves every imaginable and unimaginable image that could ever be rendered. The premise of the show is that once a render parameter is set, it cuts the space of the latent image, dividing it into images that remain possible, and images that have become impossible. Every render setting makes a particular image possible, while it compromises others.

In im/possible images, the parameters that introduce impossibility to the latent image space exist as ‘axes’ that cut the space, dividing it up into realms of possibility and impossibility. By doing so, im/possible images shows a categorisation of im/possibilities.

Get into the space of im/possibilities with Rosa Menkman at Lothringer 13 (in English Language).