Andreas Tschersich: Peripher

The eponymous “peripher” functions in the works of Andreas Tschersich, a Swiss artist based in Berlin for 14 years now, as a structural, aesthetic and mental moment. It refers to places of transit and transition that defy unequivocal classification, standardization and demarcation. Tschersich portrays cityscapes in which people, upkeep, habits and uses always remain hidden. The tenor remains the same regardless of whether the scene is set in Charleroi, Liverpool, New York or Tokyo. Tschersich’s pictures are universal and never seem foreign or forbidding, but ever familiar in their everyday banality, even to those who’ve never been there before. Tschersich is always on the lookout for motifs, to be sure, but sometimes they just come to him by serendipity. He is a master of the art of losing his way and making the most of that lost state as a creative moment. As he roams the city, sometimes it’s simply there all of a sudden: that feeling he seeks to convey in his photographs. It is the perception of that touch-and go moment when everything hangs in the balance, the instant before a fateful decision is to be reached: dereliction or gentrification, danger or safety. Anything can happen to Tschersich’s locations.