Ochre, Canvas, Focus, Loop

bachelor project at the Folkwang University of the Arts, March 2017, Essen
8 digital C-Prints, mounted on Dibond and framed
In this work I investigate the possibilities of the photographic medium in collaboration with other artistic media. I don‘t like calling my images abstract because its specific components are not abstract but the subjects shown are being abstracted from ordinary things – in that sense taking pictures has always been an abstraction. Each recipient can judge the images by their individual experience and memory. They propose a platform to discuss and ask how people look at, experience and recognize images.
The work I did for my graduation centers around two kinds of discussions: on one hand it deals with questioning the role of fabric in photography and on the other hand it deals with the connection between photography and painting. At first, I use objects, cloth and paint to create new constructions and spaces. Secondly, those new forms will be photographed. Both the stretched cloths as well as the medium of photography transform the 3-dimensional construction into 2-dimensional flatness.
On the photographic surface the viewers can only see a familiar materiality of the fabric and the paint that was put upon it. This is a hint towards the means of classical painting: paint and fabric – the canvas.
My working process is based on intertwining different decisions. As a painter I determine each brushstroke. As a photographer I determine the image through the setting of light and the positioning of the camera itself and in post production the final framing and size is being chosen. I try to invert the process of taking photographs by creating a unique reality and by building each image step by step starting with a “blank canvas”.
The perception of the viewer balances between the known and the unknown. The viewer is confronted by the ordinary fabric material which is however abstracted from its haptic characteristics by the means of photography without becoming actually abstract. The viewer can therefore experience a new point of view of an otherwise familiar material.