Mischa Leinkauf
Perspectives #02
Fonds régional d’arts contemporain Alsace
Alsace, France
Mar 25 – May 29, 2022

“Perspectives #02 presents a selection of works newly acquired by FRAC Alsace in 2019 and 2020. The works are of great formal diversity, photographs, drawings, sculptures, objects, videos, new media and performances. (…) Many of them deal with the relationship of humans to their natural or virtual environment and explore classical genres such as landscape or portraiture. The selection of works is complemented by a presentation of the documents that accompany the acquisition process and give an insight into the way a public collection works.”

Mischa Leinkauf’s Fiktion einer Nicht-Einreise (Marokko + Spanien) and (Spanien + Marokko) will be exhibited. The work is part of the series Fiktion einer Nicht-Einreise (Fiction of a Non-Entry), which shows Leinkauf crossing the invisible borders on the ocean floor between Israel and Jordan orEgypt in the Red Sea and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and Morocco in the Strait of Gibraltar. The respective regions are militarily guarded and secured by border fortifications, some of their fences protrude 30 metres from the banks into the water. Behind them, a landscape opens up to which visual separation has to surrender: the sea. By leaving the overland routes, Leinkauf traces the national interspaces. Where systematic gaps arise, he reveals the absurdity of control systems in a performative way. Instead of tearing down the architectures of isolation, Leinkauf overcomes the borders of the regions by walking in the dystopian-looking tranquillity and expanse of the sea and opens up a space of absolute freedom.