Sample Question
Spotlight: September 18th, 2026
Nina Porter @Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hamburg. 05.06.26 – 22.09.26
The Kunstverein in Hamburg presents..
Sample Question, an exhibition by Nina Porter. This marks the first institutional solo presentation of the artist and comprises new works commissioned on the occasion of the 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2026.
Sample Question ruminates on matter in elemental and diminutive forms, positioning a series of photographs as one part of the exhibition’s conceptual centre. Evoking portraits of electrified fibres, the photographs abstract the objects pictured within them, capturing an enigmatic process of self-consciousness and becoming that exceeds the condition of inanimate things. Indeed, the objects represented in these images recede from focus, as does the electric charge briefly animating the strands, giving prominence to what these entities become when they are framed together, and the charisma they emit.
Elsewhere, bricks made of compressed ash are organised into clusters throughout the gallery, demonstrating a full inversion of force—energy flows outward to galvanise the fibres, while energy concentrates inward to produce the bricks, both instances giving form and new meaning to inert and minor matter. The bricks are iterations: they come nested in wooden boxes, configured as diverse sets across the room. Although produced in elementary, graduated sizes, the bricks do not identically repeat but instead bear traces of their heterogeneous sources—Porter gathered a steady supply of ash from voluntary contributors, who most often gave their fireplace cinders; small fragments of residue or uneven tones betray some evidence of what came before.
There is an attention to lived perceptual experience, and yet the works presented here also point to the limits of physical presence. These eccentric and mute objects strain to be understood. As the works that form Sample Question, they are the yield of a practice interested in potential and to qualities more readily felt than seen, where vision is destabilised in the hierarchy of the senses. Although many of the works are dependent on formal properties, Porter’s efforts ultimately lead towards a central and immaterial knowledge.
A series of five films will be screened on select Thursdays throughout the exhibition, referred to here as “sample questions”. A mix of artist moving image and narrative films, the sample questions are of varying lengths and constitute an additional module to the exhibition: they are neither evening events nor a constant feature of the display, but instead a transitory and transient extension of the artist’s project.
Curated by Sarah Messerschmidt
