ARLES les rencontres de la photographie 2023
Opening Week: 03. – 09. July 2023
Exhibition: 03. July – 24. September 2023
FOTOHAUS | Fondation Manuel Rivera Ortiz, 18 Rue de la Calade, ARLES
connected
visions of a related world
In a variety of ways, the Viennese artist collective fiVe uses photography to open up questions about the relationship between nature and society, attempting to provide answers through art. In doing so, the photographers take a sensitive, precise approach to the subject and allow their artistic approaches to merge both visually and thematically.
In the exhibition in ARLES, Gabriela Morawetz is the guest artist of the collective.
With her series Gstettn – an Austrian expression for undeveloped urban spaces – Regina Anzenberger documents the power of nature, which always reclaims its place in a city when a space remains untouched by humans. She captures delicate yet robust plants photographically and picturesquely. Like a reliquary, she adds dried flowers taken from the places she has photographed, whose existence is threatened by future developments. In a different way, Eva-Maria Raab creates photographic relics by blurring lake water and views of lakes in her lake prints series. She incorporates seawater into her cyanotypes, thus preserving this scarce and precious commodity directly on the paper. Combining water with photochemistry in a picturesque way, she attempts to capture endangered bodies of waters both physically and poetically.
Superimpositions of chemistry and images in Raab cover the range of the digital superimpositions of Barbara Filips, who merges virtual worlds with nature in hybrid paradise. The series digitally defamilarizes infrared and thermal images, thereby reinforcing their artificial character. Her pictures are like an escape from reality into a digital metaverse, creating a jarring yet menacingly beautiful effect: once nature is completely obliterated, where else can we go? In All In Itself, Gabriela Morawetz also deals with pressing questions regarding our existence on this planet and its uncertain future. For her, the search for stability is crucial, finding both a physical and metaphorical balance in her fragile photo installations. Her landscapes convey a certain menacing quality, whereby man is seemingly crushed under some indeterminate weight. The series material world by Anny Wass also lies somewhere between utopia and reality. In her digital collages, she combines self-portraits with multiplied objects, shifting familiar perspectives. The human subject, or the artist herself, appears to be objectively related to nature and space. With a pinch of humor, Wass stages the ‘human material’ and at the same time expresses criticism of social developments through her distanced photographic view.
supported by
