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The German forest as a structure formed by light. Dematerialised, mysterious and unapproachable. Sabine's images undermine the viewer's sense of reality. Yes, the trees and the light of the forest clearings are there, but somehow these are not the classic forest images that we have internalised from childhood memories.

Here the forest is portrayed as a layer of atmospheric conditions, as an illusion created by pale, flickering light, as metaphor. Shafts of light come through the trees in rhythmic tones, bathed in magical light, simultaneously fascinating and unsettling. Images, where the emphasis is not the individual trees, but the overall impression of forest itself.

Experimental photography?

Perhaps, yes, but only to a certain extent. What is important here is not how the images are interpreted, but more the vision itself. The correspondence between reality and its transcendence to the emotional and unfathomable; which the forest, the German forest, exemplifies with a proverbial fascination.

The approach to such a visually loaded subject matter, with its break from C.D. Friedrich's Romanticism is courageous. Equally so, when having gone full circle, Sabine Wenzel returns to Romanticism; this time around devoid of gnomes and fairies, but having lost none of its mystery or drama.

In Sabine Wenzel's work the forest is presented as an integrated whole. Her focus is neither on its impenetrable depths nor on the individual trees. What she is interested in showing is, in the true sense of the word, a subjectively coloured idea of forest. Unsuitable for a PR brochure for the woodlands, and not a strategic gesture to dress itself up as Art, her images are a deeply personal response to her subject matter.

(Denis Brudna/Photonews 7/8-07)