KATHARINA SIEVERDING

Posted on 2014-03-10

The photographs of SPIEGEL Boxes, 2013, are captured from above and show cardboard boxes filled with Spiegel magazines, of which the upper two covers enter simultaneously into an antithetic and synthetic dialogue. Katharina Sieverding refers with this juxtaposition to media-transmitted images, which strikingly comment on global events and have long since become part of the collective memory. This not only questions the mechanisms of mass media vocabulary, or as the artist phrases it “what is behind the propaganda of the present?”; it is for Katharina Sieverding also about the periodic repetition of political and global issues such as war, nuclear threat, ideological struggles and economic power structures.

Archiving is a crucial idea throughout the series Invitation Boxes, 2013. Katharina Sieverding provides an insight into her personal collection of invitations – stacked in boxes, sorted by year. The individual pictures appear like time capsules and retrospectively hold on to art events of the past years. Yet, whereas the SPIEGEL Boxes expose the imagery of the mass media and the construction of collective memory as “artificial and manipulative” (Magdalena Kröner, FAZ), the works of the series Invitation Boxes provide an opposite pole. The flood of media images is opposed by the art discourse, which is able to look behind the facade of image production and, as Katharina Sieverding puts it, “to adjust the focus”.

Opposite – SPIEGEL Box 09, 2013

Exhibition runs through to May 10th, 2014

Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf Frankfurt
Hanauer Landstrasse 136
Frankfurt am Main 60314
Germany

www.wilmatolksdorf.de

   Tweet

MARTINA HOOGLAND IVANOW – SPEEDWAY

Posted on 2014-03-10

As her recent series, each of her images are imbued in a dark mesmerizing aesthetic which conveys in her images a heightened presence as real as it is poetic. “I am not aware of constructing a technique, lighting a selection of subject are choices that every photographer makes, that combined to make a personal statement. If I choose a very soft lighting, it is to capture something that’s very hard to take in”, says Hoogland Ivanow.

Speedway is a statement, a series with almost alien-like figures in a fictive world but at the same way very human. Her works often deal with reflections and personal definitions. The portraits of drivers with the masks on are very strong and almost frightening. The connection between you as a viewer and the audience at the Speedway Arenas are tight. One image – at night of course – you find the arena lightning reflecting in shoulders. Like from a sublime flash or like knights in shiny armours. Another shows a man on his knees, like in a ritual on the icy track.

There is a thread between Hoogland Ivanow´s former series all the way through to her newer works. Her excellent skills of defining odd groups, societies or subcultures, like in her series Satellite, and making sublime works out of it, are enacted in the series Speedway.

Exhibition runs through to March 22nd, 2014

Swedish Photography
Karl-Marx-Allee 62
10243
Berlin

www.swedishphotography.org

   Tweet

MIYAKO ISHIUCHI HASSELBLAD AWARD WINNER 2014

Posted on 2014-03-10

Miyako Ishiuchi has been awarded the 2014 Hasselblad Award. This is one of the most important and prestigious photography prizes in the world today. Previous winners include Lee Friedlander (2005), Jeff Wall (2002), William Eggleston (1998), Robert Frank (1996), Richard Avedon (1991), Irving Penn (1985) and Henri Cartier-Bresson (1982). Miyako Ishiuchi (b.1947), celebrated Japanese photographer, is known for her poignant work which confronts the trauma present in post-war Japan and the dawning of a new era. Her personal projects include Yokosuka Story, Apartment, Endless Night, Mother’s and Silken Dreams. In 2005 she represented Japan at the Venice Biennale with her series Mother’s.

Opposite – Yokosuka Story #98, 1976-1977

www.michaelhoppengallery.com

   Tweet