viennacontemporary 2022
08.09.2022 - 11.09.2022
Booth 07
MODELS OF VIEWING
The project explores the different ways of looking and seeing, as well as the present and the history of the images, generated and accumulated through the process of visual perception. Marta Djourina creates her images in complete darkness, relying only on the self-knowladge of her body movements and her experience. Krassimir Terziev uses dead electronic devices (which have emitted millions of images over the years) and turns them into monuments of time, using the classical technique of engraving. Luiza Margan looks into the social dimensions of the surveillance (through videocameras, smartphones, etc.) as a possibility for protection, but also as a potential threat and limitation of the human rights.
MARTA DJOURINA
„In my artistic work I explore the essence of light using photographic experiments. I examine the cause and effect of various light phenomena on photosensitive paper and thus approach the medium of light. A performative movement, an object or a combination of both is traced with various light sources and recorded on the two-dimensional carrier (a large format analogue photo paper).
The translation of the momentary takes place within the framework of the analog photography process as a painterly and performative gesture. In this way, the hidden is given a photographic view, the ephemeral is fixed, whereby the potential of light as a medium is made visible. The transfer of performative gestures can be seen in the works as an experimental color composition. Individual series of works consist of intimate small formats or monumental paper scrolls up to 6m high and work with different approaches, e.g. some projects focus on the physicality of light traces, while others focus on the visualization of geometric folds and shapes.“
KRASSIMIR TERZIEV
„The series Monument to the Time Elapsed re-appropriates some of my no longer functional devices (laptop, tablet, TV set) in a way that is completely inappropriate for information technology gadgets. On the screen of each piece of dead equipment is engraved an image of the supposed reflection of its user. During its life every gadget displayed myriad of flickering ephemeral images, but in the end of the day the only stable image that remained on the surface is the image of the user. The black screen turns out to be a perfect surface for engraving – a technique resembling in many ways the current fashion in the design of tombstones in todays Christian Orthodox world, where the portraits (or sometimes full size figures) of the deceased are engraved on the surface of black granite stones used for the make of tombstones.“
LEDA VANEVA
“Life Lines” is a visual “diary” series. It consists of all images, taken with my smartphone camera in 2020. The photos are dissolved in lines of the colours which they contained. Contours seem to lose significance. The work is a demolition of the concrete, where context gets lost and only colour remains. That makes the images universal, free from a specific situation. In the same time these photos reflect on parts of self perception created in the digital realm. They contribute to the establishment of the digital self.”
LUIZA MARGAN
The sculptural works “Statement Piece 1 & 2” are continuation of Margan’s project started in 2014, documenting the renovation and development of Vienna’s exclusive luxury district, the Goldenes Quartier in the city centre. The work is a sculptural assemblage made of Italian marble, originally used as the signature look of the interior of one of the luxury fashion stores there.
Mounted onto the marble are photographs, merging several visual realities of the whole project: the large-scale photo prints from 2015, showing construction-site workers as reflections in the marble are now used as a theatrical backdrop before which the artist records herself carrying the same marble. Multiple realities are juxtaposed, within which conflicting notions of class, labor and culture persist.
In the “Shipmakers”(2013-2022) Margan uses leather welding aprons once belonging to the shipyard workers of the Croatia’s largest shipyard, 3rd of May in Rijeka, recently downsizing in production and man power. The gentle leather folds and used surface speak of forcefully retired knowledge and labor expertise that was part of identity of generations of men from the region.
