In the first part of the year 2006 (from February till the end of August) FOTOGALERIE WIEN will be renovated. Therefore the gallery will be on tour during this time.
The gallery has been invited by several different Austrian and International Institutions.
The FOTOGALERIE WIEN office and cinema will remain open.
Opening times: Tue-Fr 16.00-19.00 / Sa 10.00-14.00
TRANSFORMATIONS
JOERG BURGER
Joerg Burger photographs our/his ordinary surroundings. He focuses banal situations with the glimpse of an idle stroller. He brings the details of such objects into the center of our attention. Certain situations become stranger through this depiction, and incidental objects develop almost sculptural qualities.
Isolated, and as in classical still-life show their self determination. Architectures (in the broadest sense) can become artificial signs, which suddenly permit areas of association, which are not immediately receptive and/or been specified in any way.
Apart from these, very special associations, the photographs do not give us any reference to a possible reading.
There is neither a “foreshadowing narration”, nor any “recognizable order” in the selection of the motives. Rather the impossibility reflects impressions and inclination of the linearity. Here its volatile character usually results in a loud and clear picture if only for short time.
Ambivalence in Joerg Burgers photography results from the contradiction in the evident snapshots. Its still life presentation of the motives in a designed (perspective correct), almost, “built” arrangement of the image space. In addition a temporal dimension enters, which has nothing more to do with the volatile, touching view, but with consciously calculated production, which orients itself both at empirical experience like pictures and scenarios from the mass media.
And we obtain herewith the What and remain with the How to ourselves. (Claudia Slanar)
ANJA MANFREDI
Première, 2005
I am a component of this world, with this attitude I attempt in the usage of fragments and figures to make the viewer attainable using the theme of the enacted sometimes unconscious showmanship.
Removed as if one could actually take a look at one’s own body. I try to bring in order my performers in relationship to the (dream) world. Each time resetting their topologies, reregistering, giving them a new place to belong, promote the deforming of the figure, projecting their thoughts on the wall, reproducing themselves over and over, promoting self cancellation with the use of unlimited figures, until…?
I use small platforms in order to perform the differentiating rolls. I find my themes for my performers through among others the rituals of the art world. The resulting photographs come through the interpretation of the gestures of these rituals. Separation between the others and I is initiated through a metamorphosis and projection towards the viewer. Seen this way we find ourselves in a phony play on a public stage acted out through imitation and alienation by friends and acquaintances. I and the others, the others and I, the others are I, and I am the others.
KLAUS PAMMINGER
daily patterns
(…) In daily patterns the pervasiveness of the media and its perception of public and private sectors spreads itself in various ways over its entire environs. Wallpapers and textiles as everyday decoration and adornments just as wallpaper-like pictures become manifestations of the media’s routine. Items from the television or the Internet coagulate into reports, whose contextual weave is coded by condensing the point.
Repetitive reporting and the concoction of formats are selected and transformed, in order to merge it into other perceptual contexts. The closer one gets to the intention the more increases an uneasiness and distrust in such a setting, which above all spreads a flair of exclusive comfort by special artificial means.
Even the media’s false redemption by the TV program remains repudiated: On a monitor runs an alienating documentary like show in continuous loop. Imprisoned in symmetrical systems with their almost endless possibilities. Contrasting abstract perception and the perception of actual intention depending upon distance. (…)
(from: `Exemplary Rapporte`by Nicola Hirner, fig. 194, Fotogalerie Wien 2004)
Comparably this applies to pattern card series. The motives also function here like pretty picture puzzles and then – depending upon the viewer’s distance and concentration – content opens in detail. Recognizable in a postcard, mass media data is thrown back again into a visual consumer world of daily life.
FIONA RUKSCHCIO
Who is looking for whom and what?
The raw material for Fiona Rukschcio’s collages is found footage from magazines and advertisements, often combined with the artist’s own paintings.
In atmospheric settings amongst protagonists from celebrity and entertainment gossip, the artist performs herself, taking on different roles and postures: sketches of identities of others and of her own collide.
Transformed text fragments are mixed up with snapshots and appetizers of everyday life of the media; their associations produce ambiguities. The commentary is at times derived from word play, which even lends quality to corny jokes.
In disparate settings and teased by the artist’s language, the actors play with the codes and implications of the raw material until they participate in the production of obvious absurdities. At times they rid themselves of the identities imposed by the media: they then run about headless in vacation settings, where not only they, but also the landscape, seem to pose.
But the question of reality and illusion is completely futile here, because we all are posturing – even the landscape can only offer something within the framework of a staging. And also the question: who is looking for whom and what? is finally redundant: because it is we who are the environment.
(Nicola Hirner, Translation: Birgit and Steve Ball)