Medineo

at World/City (SOLO SHOW)
Museum of Contemporary Art of RS, Banja Luka, BiH, 2019

Medineo
Tales yet untold

The main protagonist of China Miéville’s novel The City and the City lives on the boundary between two worlds, in a city that actually exists as two cities, as two parallel universes, albeit in the same space, invisible to one another, and yet the exact opposites in every way imaginable, separated by an imaginary and fantastic line. The hero of the novel trenscends this barrier and conjures up a wholesome image of the city.

A common denominator of Lehrner’s still images or moving photographs, is the fact the artist, like the viewer, is in the same position as the hero of The City and the City, except that in this case it is the artist who discovers otherwise invisible parts of world metropolises and exhibits his discoveries for the viewer to see. The theme of Lehrner’s explorations is tales yet untold or unknown about the cities he has visited, about the worlds that once were or still exist today, but are not experienced true to what they really are. Lehrner’s Medineo is a record of a new civilisational context of the Mediterranean as the navel of the world, with cities no longer the actual habitations along the coast connected by common economic interests and trade, but rather cities on water, gigantic cruise ships, man-made products created as monuments to the human race, which reference the centres of power of the ancient world.