Petra Karadimas
October 31 - December 5, 2009
Opening
Friday, October 30, 7-10pm
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Petra Karadimas' artworks deal with situations that take place on the sidelines – constructions sites, barren lots, designated green areas. While the images initially seem everyday and banal, the first inconsistencies are revealed on closer examination.
Karadimas' source material are her own photographs which she digitally retouches in an intensive working process. Each image element undergoes a transformation, as it were. The digital retouching results in a peculiar image materiality that appears both painterly and artificial. The photographic grain is replaced by a 'digital brushstroke' that exists virtually, but not as a texture that can be grasped or felt.
In advertising, retouching is primarily used for optimization and idealization purposes. Here, it turns into an artistic style - a signature which in reality is none. It is this ambivalent working process, that uncovers the connection between image and reality and finally breaks it open. The authenticity of photography's testimony to realtity is being questioned, just as well as the subjective expression one expects from painting.
In conjunction with the exhibition a work brochure is being published (DIN A5, 20pages)
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