Exhibition Opening 31.7. 6pm

Sigmund Freud once described female sexuality as the "dark continent" - but it would probably be too simple to describe this as the central theme of the works shown in the solo exhibition of Leipzig-born Berlin artist Ondrej Drescher.

Drescher doesn't make it easy for the viewer anyway, as he confronts them with mainly small-format watercolours whose colourfulness and structure seem as if the scenes depicted can only be seen through a veil, which pushes the viewer into the position of the unnoticed observer. Even the seemingly unambiguous motifs are easily misleading - this is not about women with horses, nymphetic depictions of nature and erotically charged miniatures that seek to satisfy the voyeurism of the viewer. In Drescher's pictures, stories are told, relationships and bonds are negotiated, with symbolic imagery and figures who are actively involved in telling these stories.

And so the "dark continent" does not stand for the Viennese psychoanalyst's discomfort with female sexuality or the female sex itself, but rather for the mysticism of storytelling inherent in Drescher's works, the voids that arise when viewing them and the place to which viewers go when they engage with Drescher's narratives.

Elsa Mack