Othmar Eder
BERGZEIT
March 3, 2007 – April 21, 2007
In ‚Bergzeit’ (mountain time) Eder appoints the origin of most motives but impedes a temporal determination of this space. Mountains carry a huge, but also slow temporality and many traces on and under their surface. In these numerous and sometimes deep shifts one may read and observe earth history. Eder references his work in many ways to it.
Cut like he detaches what happens from time and ends the temporality of his objects. Photographs and findings that he collects from his hikes and forays build the foundation of his drawings and objects. In slow and multi-layered processes Eder re-assembles these snap-shots. Layer by layer he slowly exposes the picture using a hard pencil, carbon paper, egg tempera and pigments. Line by line, interrupted by pauses and movements of going closer or farer, Eder proceeds inch by inch until the picture matches the photographic snatch.
Eder catches findings, vintage photographs, book covers, used or not anymore needed tools - extracts of moments. By his multi-layered process he conserves and prevents them from dissolution and oblivion. No ‚natures mortes’ though but living memories, brought to surface by re-using them repeatedly in graphite drawings or xylographs. This multiplex use pervades Eder's complete work. In his monochromatic pieces he applies pigments up to sixty times. Precise in perception, circular like taken through a photo lense they take the observer on an emotional time travel – blue, like icy glacier water, red, like the summer heat.
Images of deserted spaces of leisure time, stranded traces of civilisation and fading family pictures are being fixed by Eder for eternity - segregated lives, untouchable for the observer, unfold in calm and deep pictures.
Mag. Johanna Aufreiter Art Historian, Graz, A will speak at the opening reception.
Cut like he detaches what happens from time and ends the temporality of his objects. Photographs and findings that he collects from his hikes and forays build the foundation of his drawings and objects. In slow and multi-layered processes Eder re-assembles these snap-shots. Layer by layer he slowly exposes the picture using a hard pencil, carbon paper, egg tempera and pigments. Line by line, interrupted by pauses and movements of going closer or farer, Eder proceeds inch by inch until the picture matches the photographic snatch.
Eder catches findings, vintage photographs, book covers, used or not anymore needed tools - extracts of moments. By his multi-layered process he conserves and prevents them from dissolution and oblivion. No ‚natures mortes’ though but living memories, brought to surface by re-using them repeatedly in graphite drawings or xylographs. This multiplex use pervades Eder's complete work. In his monochromatic pieces he applies pigments up to sixty times. Precise in perception, circular like taken through a photo lense they take the observer on an emotional time travel – blue, like icy glacier water, red, like the summer heat.
Images of deserted spaces of leisure time, stranded traces of civilisation and fading family pictures are being fixed by Eder for eternity - segregated lives, untouchable for the observer, unfold in calm and deep pictures.
Mag. Johanna Aufreiter Art Historian, Graz, A will speak at the opening reception.
