++++ It may be that the young woman would not be very enthusiastic if she knew that her meeting with her friend at Zurich Central Railway Station is now part of an exhibition. It would surely be embarrassing for her that you can so clearly see that her welcoming kiss is not genuine. Her mouth avoids touching the cheek, and that not because of lipstick. But when you do not think you are being observed, and you probably do much more than is really the case, you do not worry too much about self-control. This can also be seen in the man wearing a fleecy sports jacket. His idleness and waiting seem very touching on the large screen. He is almost made naked in his deep contemplation.
Kalin Serapionov documents quotidian waiting situations at the railway station with his video camera without being noticed. He clearly invades the privacy of his involuntary actors. Similar to the Swiss photographer, Beat Streuli, who takes photos of pedestrians without them noticing and in this way robs them of non-spectacular, but simultaneously astonishingly expressive moments, Serapionov proceeds with his video camera.
A strange situation arises in the video viewing room. Visitors automatically become voyeurs and reproduce Serapionov's secret appropriation of the private moments of strangers. The size of the projection also adds to the unease. To see such a banal action on a big screen, recorded without permission of the subjects, amounts to a misrelation between form and content.
Or it signifies that the content, the banal welcoming and waiting, gains a new dimension. The secretly observed persons are projected onto two adjacent projection screens. The aim of the artist, who was born in Bulgaria, is to capture the transitory, uncontrolled situation of overfull public places and to displace them into the closed system of a backdrop resembling a laboratory.
Occasionally, the peaceful, sometimes almost seemingly aimless togetherness of individuals, which mostly remains without any point of contact, is interrupted by loud noises. They prevent you from becoming too comfortable as an unauthorized observer. Then an almost threatening impression of vulnerability arises.
Frankfurter Kunstverein, Steinernes Haus, Römerberg 44 hoh