ALIENATURE

Nature and the expe­ri­ence of nature as an emo­tio­nally char­ged alter­na­tive to cul­ture, which is based on ratio­nal human moti­ves for action, has been one of its favo­rite topoi since the begin­ning of fine arts. Ine­vi­ta­bly, howe­ver, every depic­tion of nature, espe­cially land­scape, is sub­ject to a pro­cess of selec­tion and reduc­tion, depen­ding on the artist’s indi­vi­dual access by means of sym­bo­lic trans­for­ma­tion, right up to abstrac­tion. This not only applies to manu­ally crea­ted works of art, but also to pho­to­gra­phy, which no less uses the crop­ped frame and the­reby enters into a dia­lo­gue with the com­plex variety of struc­tures and colors found.
The cur­rent exhi­bi­tion with pho­to­gra­phic posi­ti­ons by Die­mut von Funck and Sebas­tian Weise starts at the inter­face bet­ween the objec­tify­ing repro­duc­tion of nature and its artistic inter­pre­ta­tion through alie­na­tion. The Munich pho­to­gra­pher Die­mut von Funck (born 1952 in Kre­feld, trai­ned at the Pra­gue School of Pho­to­gra­phy in Kefer­markt near Linz) is less inte­res­ted in depic­ting the obvious than in the rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of form and color, which she uses in the artistic pro­cess via the move­ment of the camera as well as in the super­im­po­si­tion of motifs. It‘s the change, the dis­so­lu­tion of space and time, the inter­wea­ving of sur­faces that allow a dif­fe­rent rea­lity to appear in abstrac­tion: brin­ging the invi­si­ble out from behind the visi­ble, expo­sing sym­bo­lic struc­tures of nature.
The over­lap­ping land­scape shots by Sebas­tian Weise (born 1975 in Son­ders­hau­sen, stu­dies of cul­ture and applied media in Leip­zig and Ilmenau), on the other hand, refer to Sur­rea­list pain­ting in their tech­ni­cal approach as well as in their appearance and com­po­si­tion. “The (basic) images were crea­ted over a period of several years. Some are part of other series, some were wait­ing in the archive to be redis­co­vered. Their com­bi­na­tion or fusion brings them into new aes­the­tic and also the­ma­tic con­texts. The pro­cess of col­lage was used very intui­tively by me.” During the time of tra­vel restric­tions during the corona pan­de­mic, Weise crea­ted a series of new land­scape images from exis­ting mate­rial as fic­ti­tious pla­ces of lon­ging, vary­ing his main theme–randomly found objects and places–in many ways.