Nocturnal
Birgit Graschopf
As part of its presentation at Parallel 2017, Galerie Rudolf Leeb showed new works by Vienna-based artist Birgit Graschopf. The photo series Untitled / ReAkt (2017) and Untitled / Nocturnal (2016-17) are dedicated to the theme of the "night piece," reinterpreting it and expanding it to include the aspect of the performative.
For the long exposures entitled ReAkt, the artist has staged herself and posed for well-known nudes from art history, with exposure times of up to five hours. Unavoidable movements of the body during the long sessions and the covering of the body with black fabric disturb the process of photographic inscription and lead to blurring and a kind of "transparency" of the figures. One feels reminded of early daguerreotypes. These "ghostly traces" vividly illustrate the process of inscription taking place in photography, which the term itself carries within itself - photo-graphy, writing with light. Exposure on opaque material such as sandpaper or the wall itself causes this effect to become even more dense on the surface of the image, leading to unexpected results.
The interrelation between the gesture of displaying and refusal is to be understood in the sense of a feminist reading, because the artist herself determines what she is willing to show. In this way, she thwarts the role of the traditionally passive female (nude) model and of women as objects of art. Graschopf is both protagonist and stager, artist and model of her photographs. As she herself says: "The body becomes a vessel, a shell - an attempt to refuse to be looked at." This aspect becomes particularly vivid in the wall exposure entitled Untitled / ReAkt, which the artist created on the occasion of the Parallel exhibition especially for this place, which is to be demolished, with its wonderful view. Here, the evasion of the gaze is taken to the extreme; the head of the figure, which seems to take up the real view out of the window, is hardly recognizable. The analog technique of wall exposure is a complex process, a balancing act with an output that is not always predictable.
With Passeggio, Birgit Graschopf takes up the gestures of showing and concealing again and translates the technical inscription of photography into another medium. This is paper that has been manually blackened with graphite. The contours of the motifs are literally carved out of the image carrier and only acquire their visibility through the "injury" or removal of the material, namely in the form of pinpricks, whose perforations are reminiscent of pixels in digital photography. This obstinate form of material "pictorialisation" finds its counterpart in the multiplied and multi-perspectively represented motif of the dark passage, at the end of which there is light. In contrast to the opaque sandpaper works, the reflective surface of the graphite reinforces the ephemeral character of the drawing. The picture itself requires the interaction and movement of the viewer in space in order to become visible at all.
Text and curation: Georgia Holz
