2d

These works in black and white are created by exploring the photograms that were tried-and-tested experimentally many times over during the pioneering age of modernism. At first sight, the end product of Aerosols is barely distinguishable visually from photograms: in both instances the space once occupied by the object is reproduced, in terms of motif, as a negative that acts as a positive; in terms of artistic gesture, they were created by spray-painting objects onto paper.

These photographs came about as site-specific works in a church setting in Krumpendorf in the federal province of Carinthia. In a collaboration with Asian and African asylum seekers in Klagenfurt, paper casts of their body were substantiated through sculptural folds to create inanimate yet moving shells which were then positioned throughout the main hall of the church and photographed. The image plates created in this way were installed temporarily along the walls of the church interior; for the duration of an exhibition, they demonstrated the simultaneity of virtual and real circumstances.

In Aerosols it is first and foremost technical objects characteristic of our civilisation that form the mainstay of the photogram-like works. By contrast, in Galaxies, natural images of plants, leaves, fruits, etc., are generated as abstract images in the atomised spray of black paint. Here again, the shadow consciously formed and induced by the spraying of objects serves to dissolve the contour lines in favour of outlines that have no clear delimitations and convey a sense of three-dimensionality.

The artist’s fragmentary body is the image motif for the photo series created based on a projected video work. In these snapshots the assembled, mirrored, animated body images alienated through digital interventions are transposed to a surreal, abstract and unreal imagery.