Josef Dabernig: Textual Photography
2013. október 25 – december 1
Kurátor: Angel Judit
Megnyitó: 2013. október 25, 19.00
tranzit dielne / workshops, Studená 12, Bratislava
The exhibition comprising a new selection from Josef Dabernig’s ongoing Panorama photo-series and the film Lancia Thema (2005) aims to highlight trademark aspects of the artist’s oeuvre and propose new readings of the relationship between photography, film and space. Dabernig considers himself a visual artist who extends a sculptural concept to different media (film, photography, text, object and construction), which overlap in various ways. This unrestricted treatment of media is balanced by the formally minimalistic, precisely ordered appearance of his works; beneath their structural rigour there is, however, a strong emotional undercurrent. As the first project of tranzit.sk’s new program (under the direction of Judit Angel), the exhibition is also meant to model a concentrated, yet multilayered merging of concept, methodology, structure, medium and contextual approach.
The 345 small-sized photographs displayed on tables, in a number of strands, are outcomes of Dabernig’s travels in Eastern and Southern Europe, Latin America, Northern Africa and East Asia. All of them are panoramic views of more-or-less empty spaces on the outskirts of big cities: stadiums, sports grounds and other spaces undergoing transformation. For those who know the codes, these places may acquire mythical dimensions; they are caught in moments in between their idealization and disappearance. While the central void represents a kind of zero-degree level of releasing people’s imagination, peripheral traces of historic, social, economic and cultural changes provide data for possible scenarios about these places.
By celebrating the void, the artist critically approaches media culture and comments on its spectacular, obscuring and exoticizing aspects. Viewing/reading these images one after the other may easily turn into a filmic or textual experience. In a complementary manner, photographs from the artist’s archive and the ritual of taking panoramas serve as constitutive elements of Lancia Thema. Part road movie, part anti-commercial, Lancia Thema also sets forth a subtle layer of institutional criticism, the artist being producer, director and actor of his film(s) at the same time.
While there is a continuous shift of cross-references between the photographs in the table-top installation and the film projection, the project on display finally builds on a dialogue with the site of the exhibition, a former cement factory located on the periphery of the city. In this way the project further unfolds an inquiry into history, places, dreams and expectations.
