Curatorial Statement “Olfactories of Becoming”
In this monochromatic series, the flower becomes more than a symbol—it is a tactile prosthesis of inner transformation. Lehner's lens choreographs a triad of gestures in which the female subject does not merely hold or inhale the bloom, but fuses with it—surrendering the boundary between skin and petal, breath and scent. The erotic charge is neither performative nor voyeuristic; rather, it stages a phenomenology of becoming, where sensuality is not directed outward but folds inward, activating a self-affective loop of recognition, longing, and interiority.
The body, partially disrobed yet never objectified, is framed as a site of intimate ritual. Against a backdrop of deep chiaroscuro, flesh and flora engage in a silent epistemology of touch. The flower, pale and luminous, does not contrast the body—it completes it. Identity in this visual register is not pre-given but composed in slow exposure, as if to suggest that femininity is not worn but grown through acts of gentle defiance.
What emerges is a visual treatise on embodied temporality. Lehner’s women do not pose; they attend to themselves. This quiet sovereignty, rendered in velvet tones and exacting composition, resists resolution. The work remains suspended—much like the breath before the bloom is exhaled—between eroticism and introspection, visibility and withdrawal.
List of Photographs at Saatchi
