Anita Witek was born in 1970 in Austria, she lives and works in Vienna. She completed an MA in painting at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, and an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in London, UK.

 

Amongst many prestigious awards that she received was the Austrian Art Prize for Photography in 2015. Witek uses found visual material to create collages and photomontages, working with analogue phogography. Some of the images take a format of framed three-dimensional photographs, the others are spatial installations that overwrite physical space. As Witek’s main interest lies in the subliminal influence of the photographic environment on our perception and memory, she removes the focal points from the source material by cutting them out. It is the background of these “erased” motifs – the spaces surrounding the depictions as well as the surface structures and fragments that are generally not at the centre of attention – that the artist draws on as her source material. Following the principle of the collage, she layers these elements on top of each other to create imaginary spaces that she then photographs in various stages of the assembly process. By decontextualizing the fragments and transferring them into new, unintended contexts, the artist strives to reveal inherent, latent levels of meaning.

 

Anita Witek has exhibited world-wide and her works are in prestigious public and pivate collections including Albertina, Vienna, Austria; Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria; MUSA, the Collection of the Town of Vienna, Austria; TBA21 Collection, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Austria; The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas, USA; Charles Betlach Collection, CA, USA; La Jolla, CA, USA.

 

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Anita Witek