A Conversation between Dennis Gun and Dieter Scholz
Berlin, September 2010

Dieter Scholz: What fascinated me most the last time I was in your studio was the deep glowing black in your works and the objects that flow and hover across this blackness. I was particularly struck by your photograph After the Last Supper. Could you say something about how you developed this piece?

Dennis Gun: My works are baroque, comprising light and shadow, depth and space. The background is usually black, particularly in these most recent works. This gives visibility to the depth, a near endless space. Strictly speaking, the works are unfinished, since they have neither a beginning nor an end. That's generally the way I stage my photographs. Each of them narrates a story with an unfinished narrative. The process has its origin somewhere—in a glance, a thought—and can be enlarged from there. That's my objective. In this sense, my works are similar to baroque painting – and I've always been fascinated by its play of light and shadow. I've tried to connect this with my work in a very different way.

DS: But in this case it's not such an open and endless narrative. This work has a very clear reference to the Last Supper with Christ and his disciples. And there are strips of paper with names that look like place cards. There's also a second, matching piece called The Last Supper…

DG: Yes, that's right. Of course, this is a subject many artists have addressed. I was interested in the question of what this Last Supper was. Was it an evening meal, a gathering? And what happened after this Last Supper? I first made The Last Supper and then After the Last Supper. In the first, I though about a real dinner, and that's why there are place cards showing who sits where.