Categories
Exhibitions

PETER FREITAG / STEVE GIOVINCO / URSULA ROGG

8. November 2001 – 1. December 2001

Peter Freitag (DE), Ursula Rogg (DE), Steve Giovinco (EN)

Peter Freitag

Kommunikationsbeispiele

The works shown are pictures that have all been taken from travel agency catalogues that were used there as examples of happy families on their holidays. Based on these pictures, which are presented to us as small 4-color print photographs from all kinds of travel catalogues, a minimal alteration of the original clearly positive, seemingly desirable and enviable situation of happy communication or devoted play inverts the situation into an ambiguous, open-ended one. This is achieved through the removal of various original reference objects such as drinks, toys, magazines, etc., through digital adaptation on the computer. Scopes of association of different forms are thereby opened for the viewer– scopes of association that infiltrate the original intention of the picture. The attention of the viewer is directed towards the relationship between people, whom no longer relate to one another, however, due to the missing original reference object, but are now relating past one another. In reference to their source, the works are entitled “examples of communication” and are numbered consecutively.

Steve Giovinco

Statement on „Myth of the Everyday“

Exploring the myth of relationships, my photographs are x-rays into an emotionally fractured world. Combining [Mixed between] metaphor and stark realism, the series [describes] draws inspiration from film, literature, folk tales and painting. They are mysterious and enigmatic moments of daily life, suffused with a drama of the everyday. The images explore sexually charged, psychologically intense intimate relations between couples in which there is a nagging unease and directness that describe a haunting sense of loss. Ultimately, love is derailed and people are disconnected.
Acting as both a guide and participant, I am intimately involved in the image-making process. Starting from charged, real world relationships, the self-portraits are both candidly spontaneous and intuitively staged. They are reenactments of deliberately uncomfortable events unfolding before the camera. By photographing the familiar as if it were strange, I blend the previously discrete notions of staged and candid photography: the images are part artifice and part spontaneity. By harnessing this paradox of photography I describe an intuitive yet descriptive sense of how we live today.

Ursula Rogg

Surprise Chefs

The works originated during the production of an English cooking programme.
“Surprise Chefs” is a TV-programme in England that is popular among housewives and elderly people. The star of the programme, Kevin, is a TV cook. The Surprise Chefs” team addresses shopping customers in supermarkets. With the contents of their shopping carts