Love is complicated.

Love is simple.

Both sentences are true and that is probably why people have always been entangled in relationships and connections with others. The greatest stories, the most uplifting music have been conceived out of despair over the end of love. And what did the late Carrie Fisher say? Take your broken heart and turn it into art.

Constantin Hartenstein embarks on a search for love, for closeness and vulnerability. In ten sculptural moments, he preserves the environments he creates, the people and stories he encounters. Hartenstein casts the bottle of wine you drink together on your first date, the empty packet of cigarettes you leave behind, in epoxy resin, thus preparing these fleeting moments for eternity.

What does dating mean in an age in which love is increasingly capitalized? Can two people really get close and what does that look like? Or do we have to find and invent completely new forms of closeness and mutual care?

In a video work, eleven people talk about their first queer love. What form it took, how it felt.

Do you find love when you’re looking for it or do you have to let yourself be found? In a big city where you could invent a new version of your life every day, it seems hard to settle on one person. But love can also be found in small, tender moments, it doesn’t always have to mean a whole life to be true.

Love is still the greatest emotion a person can feel. It manifests itself in very different aggregate states, if we allow it to.

Text by Laura Helena Wurth

Photos by Julian Rabus