Anita Witek, Curator’s Desktop, 25 May – 4 August

A tidy desk? Not a chance. Too much good photography everywhere. It must no doubt be shown, or at least written about! When someone like a curator and author Ruth Horak has been talking about photographs for the last 20 years – their backgrounds and contexts, their status as works of art or forms of communication – a cluttered desk is the precursor of every exhibition, every text, every reading. For the summer exhibition, she has put together her current “objects of desire”, works by Austrian and international artists distinguished by a particular pictorial language or an unusual view of everyday life. As is the case on the (both analogue and digital) desk of a curator, other photographs and references are associatively presented alongside the originals, the informative complements the sensual, and again and again, the capabilities of photography are demonstrated – visualizing details or what is invisible with precision – as are its medial peculiarities, its (light) sensitivity and transparency, its (inverse or instant image) processes. The artists access obsolete materials from analogue photography or build and refashion devices, they work and illuminate in both analogue and digital forms, technical image meets artistic concept, darkroom meets lightroom: bulbs, developing trays, light protection pouches, Polaroid chemicals, amorphous forms, fragile surfaces, transparency and deception. Negatives and photograms bring an unusual colouring and abstraction into play.

Ruth Horak has had a long-standing collaboration with an appreciation for the work of some of the selected artists, while others she has re-encountered by chance, having only seen their work briefly at some point but had kept in mind for years. What they all have in common is their aesthetic approach to their images and their unusual content and the level of reflection and insight they put into their work.

 

Further details can be found here. 

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