Temporal Imprints

Thilo Reich’s Temporal Imprint series consists of large-scale glass castings of sections of buildings that reveal forgotten histories of production and traces of their former inhabitants. Using a 4-step process, Reich’s reliefs are created by excavating a circular piece of wall (often buried under many layers of other building materials), taking a silicon imprint, creating a mouldand finally, a glass casting.

These bespoke glass objects capture highly detailed imprints of the bricks and mortar that have been concealed behind the walls, revealing traces of handiwork, hanging points, furniture, scratches, fingerprints, varying materiality, and evolutions in the buildings structure over time. With these ghostly captures suspended in glass, Temporal Imprints also allude to forgotten stories of bygone eras–– the haunting skeletal imprints highlighting the ephemeral nature of a building and the lives of its past inhabitants.

(Note: the hanging points of the series pictured here are placed in the exact spots where similar hanging points were revealed in the hidden wall, hence their seemingly random pattern)