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As a basis for his photorealist paintings, Johannes Kahrs uses photographs as well as film and video stills from popular culture and politics, which he removes from their original contexts. Here, it is above all the cropped close-up view that lends his works an immediate, but also unsettling effect. In an interview, the painter remarked, "The paintings are realistic, yet there is something that you can’t see, and that comes through." In "Untitled (Three Men Standing)", the close cropping puts the focus on precisely that which would usually only have a covert influence in a situation: the clothing and posture of the three men. They emanate a sense of power and seem threatening without it being clear who they are and where the image on which the painting is based comes from. In this way, Kahrs turns our attention to the sophisticated registers of social power and subtle dominance which, in our everyday interactions, we sense unconsciously.