Stefanie Seufert
April 25 - June 13, 2009
Opening
Friday, April 24, 7-10pm
      ...
Tree tops appear isolated in front of a neutral white background. Stars write straight lines of light on darkish ground. A handmade basket forms a spatial paradox. Garlands reflect surroundings, one doesn’t see.
Stefanie Seufert documents trees, objects, the movement of stars. For her analog photographs she uses a large format camera, producing impressive accuracy of detail. She observes the everyday with clear vision. The compositions are classical. Surrounding details are being avoided.
What is represented, stands without context or explanatory hint detached by itself. As a result, the works develop a life of their own, beyond the documentary and beyond strictly factual seeing and understanding. Stefanie Seufert has set herself a framework in which she observes and questions, without forcing the issue. Where others have presumed reality sufficiently represented, she has opened up new spaces of association.
The scenes are often taken from her immediate surroundings, while the objects are preferably from the so-called low-price segment. The objects don’t betray their origin, however. With simple means, they are staged in such a way, that their materiality cannot be clearly deduced. The mode of presentation evokes added value. The objects appear precious, valorised, removed from time.
Seufert usually photographs her subjects in series. Typologies come into being, suggesting that image objects can be simply grasped through their specific peculiarities. Yet, Seufert’s works always require a second or third gaze. Only then the viewer forms associations, that go beyond the phenomenological, where an interplay between reality and association can begin.
|
