At a beach, bathers enact a familiar ritual. Facing the sea, backs to the land, they watch the waves foam and break as the sun makes its descent. It is a familiar scene, imaginable anywhere, at any given beach. But if, in a scene identical to this one, the sky were to darken, hinting at a distant fire, and the bathers remained unmoved, the initial harmony of the image would falter. Something should happen, but nothing does. Perhaps because a sky laced with the suggestion of disaster captivates more deeply than one of ordinary beauty.

In his solo exhibition Dissonanzen, Robert Brambora explores atmospheres of contradiction throughout a broad body of work — how we navigate, live with, and at times find ourselves inexplicably drawn to them. Spanning painting, sculpture and installation, the exhibition composes a language of contrast in which both interior and exterior spaces are implicated in states of unresolved tension. His paintings depict hazy cityscapes bathed in smog and artificial light, their surfaces punctured by glowing screens and distant windows. Eyes look out from these fragmented environments, worlds of abstract systems and structures where individuality struggles to assert itself, yet continues to find its place.

Set against the backdrop of this abstract ambiance, an installation of scorched wardrobes introduces a more intimate register. Burned and blackened, these once-domestic objects recall disrupted interiors and rooms once filled with private moments. Despite their damage, the wardrobes are arranged with deliberate care, as if they still carry emotional weight. A warmth emanates, not from the burnt wood itself, but from the small golden figurines housed within and upon them. In some instances, the figurines are affixed to the outer, broken edges where the wood has chipped off, reminiscent of sculptures adorning historic buildings. They imbue the scene with a presence that lingers, while the cause of destruction goes unexplained.

Despite the undertone of threat, Brambora’s is not a moral universe seeking to point out the origins of damage. Instead, the exhibition brings forth a logic of the in-between. Dissonance is not approached as something to be resolved, but as a constituent part of harmony itself, an unstable equilibrium in which forms that should clash begin, somehow, to coexist.

At times, this friction may provoke unease. But sometimes, two notes strike such a profoundly wrong chord that not much is left to do but gaze, transfixed, like the bathers, at a scene that escapes us.

— Sophie Cassel