Bio­gra­phy

Eva Gantar (born 1973) is a free­lance archi­tect and pho­to­gra­pher. Her approach to pho­to­gra­phy is con­cep­tual. For Gantar, the tran­sitory moment and the depic­tion of levels of rea­lity not visi­ble to the naked eye are of cru­cial rele­vance. Through dif­fe­rent methods (camera obscura, chan­ges in phy­si­cal con­di­ti­ons, etc.), she attempts to cap­ture the micro­sco­pic moments of ever­y­day life and make them legi­ble. Once she choo­ses the approach, she no lon­ger inter­venes.
The point of depar­ture for the series “Ice cubes” (2008) and “Cross­roads” 1 (2009) is an arial view of a con­ven­tio­nal street scene with pede­stri­ans. The street’s inter­sec­tion con­trols the speed of the city bet­ween standstill and move­ment. Also in the pho­to­gra­phi­cal sense, the image is fro­zen. It is sub­ject to che­mi­cal influ­en­ces to the point of alte­ring its phy­si­cal state until it com­ple­tely dis­sol­ves. The image is pee­led away layer by layer and repea­tedly pho­to­gra­phed.
The last visi­ble rem­nants are richly con­tras­ting, unch­an­ge­able sec­tions of the image. For the series “Bon Voyage“2 (2010), she out­fit­ted a suit­case as a camera obscura and pla­ced it in a rail­way sta­tion. The suit­case acts as both a camera and a sub­strate whose sur­face can create unfil­te­red images. Ulti­mately, the suit­case its­elf beco­mes an exhi­bi­tion object. Gantar plays with the change of per­spec­tives, the time-delayed pho­to­graphs devoid of people taken from a suit­case, and the shot of the suit­case being taken almost simul­ta­neously by a digi­tal camera loca­ted across from it.
“Toxic Beach” (2012) aims to unsettle the viewer, because only at second glance does the see­min­gly idyl­lic beach turn out to be a toxically-burdened restric­ted area near an oil refi­nery. The photo series is taken from a sin­gle image. Like using a tele­scope in a voy­eu­ristic man­ner, clip­pings are extrac­ted, details are rese­ar­ched, and stand-alone images are iso­la­ted regard­less of their reso­lu­tion and focus. All toge­ther they tell a story and read like a cine­ma­tic sequence.
In her new works she deals with situa­ti­ons in urban areas, collec­tions of pla­ces with strange syn­er­gies, as well as the unusual and absurd moments that result at times. Objects and spaces pro­vide infe­ren­ces about the cha­rac­ter of the people who own and inha­bit them. In suc­ces­sion, they are being made legi­ble as cul­tu­ral codes. In addi­tion to her regu­lar par­ti­ci­pa­tion in exhi­bi­ti­ons in Vienna, the artist Eva Gantar con­sis­tently exhi­bits in Munich.

Cur­ri­cu­lum Vitae

Web­site: www.evagantar.net

Port­fo­lio