Group show
KOPFSTAND
May 24, 2008 – July 12, 2008
Nathalie Bissig, Michelle Grob, Sabrina Friio, Ursula Groser and Xandra Linsin – five women from the art scene who not only approach the perceptions, but also with dissimilar working materials.
Five women turned on their heads. Kopfstand (Headstand). The suggestive choice of the exhibition title does not only refer to the idiosyncratic images but can also be read metaphorically as a cursor of present-day portraiture. From the long tradition of the portrait in visual art, photography has developed from being a purely representative variety of image production into an independent artistic form - and has even given significant impulses to painting. Photography’s relation to reality allowed for a new aesthetic experience previously unavailable via other genres. This reality, uninfluenced by the artist, stood as an antithesis to the compositional or manipulative element and was later picked up and integrated into painting. Today the borders between the two genres have almost entirely disappeared, leaving the different image types to permanently interact.
The concepts behind portrait photography continually offer occasion to be reassessed and revised. Questions of identity and individuality are certainly two of the most important for these selected artists. The question of “what” and “how” the artist presents something goes hand-in-hand with an exhaustive dialogue of that person with their identity. The difficulty in this process, however, is the awareness that it is not a question of an exactly defined identity but primarily multilayered influences that create multiple characters in us. A faithful, unadulterated reproduction is actually impossible. This leads to a crucial question, or even to the conclusion, that we as people with manifold characters are deeply influenced by our environment and our culture. Portraits can thus uncover only partial aspects of out identity and individuality.
In her drawings, Nathalie Bissig seizes upon fragmentary personal thoughts, wishes and dreams, which she also processes photographically, mixing images of a portrayed person with those of an introspective, staged self-portrait. Michelle Grob’s work deals loosely with universally known icons. Her coarsely pixelated images demonstrate how surprisingly quickly images are burnt into the general consciousness. Sabrina Friio’s portraits look away, are actually turned away, yet they still look at us, giving us details of their identity and personality. Ursula Groser traces the everyday life and desires of a housewife in her video ‘Simple Escape’. The grey-white portraits of Xandra Linsin possess an almost ueber-aesthetic quality. With the uniformity of the colours and the background, it is more the idea of the portrayed that is presented rather than the portrayed themselves.
The concepts behind portrait photography continually offer occasion to be reassessed and revised. Questions of identity and individuality are certainly two of the most important for these selected artists. The question of “what” and “how” the artist presents something goes hand-in-hand with an exhaustive dialogue of that person with their identity. The difficulty in this process, however, is the awareness that it is not a question of an exactly defined identity but primarily multilayered influences that create multiple characters in us. A faithful, unadulterated reproduction is actually impossible. This leads to a crucial question, or even to the conclusion, that we as people with manifold characters are deeply influenced by our environment and our culture. Portraits can thus uncover only partial aspects of out identity and individuality.
In her drawings, Nathalie Bissig seizes upon fragmentary personal thoughts, wishes and dreams, which she also processes photographically, mixing images of a portrayed person with those of an introspective, staged self-portrait. Michelle Grob’s work deals loosely with universally known icons. Her coarsely pixelated images demonstrate how surprisingly quickly images are burnt into the general consciousness. Sabrina Friio’s portraits look away, are actually turned away, yet they still look at us, giving us details of their identity and personality. Ursula Groser traces the everyday life and desires of a housewife in her video ‘Simple Escape’. The grey-white portraits of Xandra Linsin possess an almost ueber-aesthetic quality. With the uniformity of the colours and the background, it is more the idea of the portrayed that is presented rather than the portrayed themselves.
