Vincent Reichenbach does not represent alienation; he constructs it. Concrete, cement blocks, photographic transfers, industrial surfaces. His practice develops through materials that seem to deny any possibility of intimacy. Yet it is precisely within their friction, weight and hardness that intimacy finds space.
Reichenbach looks at places we pass through without pausing: corridors, public toilets, light switches and architectural details destined to remain unnoticed. These are anonymous spaces, suspended between transit and abandonment.
Rather than depicting them, he treats them as emotional devices. He is less interested in the image itself than in what these places and objects come to retain over time. A light switch ceases to be merely functional. A blurred corridor no longer describes a space, but a memory unable to locate itself precisely. His images do not document reality; they bring to the surface the emotional traces deposited within it.
His visual language also rejects emphasis. Concrete remains concrete, blocks remain blocks, without being transformed into symbols or metaphors. It is precisely this stubborn fidelity to the materials that allows an unexpected vulnerability to emerge. Reichenbach seems to suggest that estrangement does not belong to exceptional events, but to ordinary life. It accumulates within the objects we touch every day until it becomes almost invisible.
Painting, photography and installation cease to exist as separate languages. Photographic images are transferred onto canvas and then embedded in concrete. The paintings acquire the physical presence of architectural elements, while the installations recall derelict buildings or abandoned construction sites stripped of their original function. The works occupy an uncertain space between image and object, construction and ruin.
Presented at ReA Art Fair 2026, the Threshold series (2026) continues this enquiry. Photographic prints mounted on canvas are cast into concrete blocks and raised on simple hollow breeze blocks. Images of familiar spaces emerge only partially: corridors, walls and architectural details appear in fragments, as though memory had become trapped in the concrete before it could fully take shape.
Reichenbach's practice never attempts to resolve these tensions. It keeps them open, compelling the viewer to remain within an ambiguous space between construction and demolition, recognition and estrangement. It is precisely within this state of suspension that his work finds its intensity.
Text by Vittoria Martinotti