Obliged to their own smooth materiality, the large-format photographs of Sonja Kälberer ineluctably and mercilessly bring forth an abysmal darkness from inner spaces - a darkness where, in disturbing lustre, a room appears, calm and open. A reality comes to light which breathes brute materiality, unordered mass and rapture, and which, beyond all possible narratives, becomes sensuously real.
Dark rooms marked by dilapidation in a torn and run-down state put us under a subversive spell to relish in disgust and terror, a vibrant attraction. The rooms stand in their own fathomless solitude. Manifestly stuck, hopelessly boarded up windows hold the daylight reality at bay. The world is dark and bare. Eternal night inside the room. Barricaded and sealed off, the interior turns away from the world outside and realigns the borders for an expansion towards the inside. Sonja Kälberer stages an interior, that eludes its own limitations, as a refuge.
by Anja Brähler