Chua Chye Teck is a passionate collector of images, memories and spaces. He takes photographs of the visible and with them he indicates things invisible. His work is inspired by the conflicting field of spatial and social relations within specific, generally urban surroundings; it is a matter of people, their actions with respect to the space they occupy, inhabit or merely cross briefly.

In his Berlin pictures, Teck portrays the vitality of the city and shows that life surrounds us everywhere – even in places where there are no people or other living creatures. The artist believes that the spirit of history can be sensed in many places here and that small, everyday ‘legacies’ of human activity combine to create an impression of the city’s dynamic “being-inhabited”. Teck is especially intrigued by the simple things: people’s everyday actions, the way in which things are done, rituals and routines, streetscapes and landscape, all the traces of human existence, however tiny. As all this varies from one culture and continent to the next, Chua Chye Teck has made it his task to develop parallels and differences in his photographs and to highlight unique qualities.

The Berlin series “City Landscape” being presented in the Künstlerhaus comprises more than 30 photographs. Chua Chye Teck uses them to teach the viewer that everyday things may be full of surprise and humour and enables him to take a brief look behind the city’s only apparently rigid facade.