The works of Mira Klug examine the dispositive of photography for the possibilities of an altered representation of reality, in which the artist manipulatively intervenes in the image content. In her series, Klug refers to organic elements that are detached from their original context and brought into new contexts of meaning, often appearing in multiple ways in the individual image formations, bringing moments of memory and reconstruction into play.

This applies, for example, to the photo series "Leibliches Ornament" ("Bodily Ornament"), in which tangerine peels pressed in one piece are joined together to form a pattern, or "ornament" in art historical terms, and allow for variable compositions. The wall piece consists of 14 parts, each of which represents an independent photograph.
This multiplicity leads to the internalization of an action that has been carried out several times in the past, which has anabstract aesthetic due to the black and white component.    

In the series "embodied," flattened tangerine skins are transferred as patterns onto deerskin, sewn together, and coated with latex and watercolor. Here, Klug references the potential for memory, or what has long been "eaten and digested," which is symbolically brought to mind and revives the tangerines. Inside these balls is fertile volcanic sand from Mount Etna, marking an invisible content and, in a few balls, also consisting of tangerine seeds,
to imply a possible renewal of the fruit.  

"Disembodied Hands" refers to historical set pieces, in this case relics of the Turkish Liberation Monument from Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral, left over after the 1945 fire. In partially skin-tone colored but original stills from black-and-white archival photographs, the artist shows real hands trying to repair the broken statues of this monument, as well as the hands of the statues themselves, raising questions about the process of mutual influence. Human and stone hands become figuratively one and refer to transience as well as historical processes of transformation. 

Another manipulative gesture is evident in the double exposure "verortet," in which a belly is emblazoned on a stylized house façade. The house as an architectural fixum is synonymous with the permanence of places and their potential for identification. Here, too, the artist mixes organic with inorganic materials and focuses on different moments that are transferred into a photography-based plane of reality.

Walter Seidl on the solo show of Mira Klug at SPARK 2021

Mira Klug ( *1992 in Graz) lives and works in Vienna

2008-2012 Ortweinschule Graz,
2013-2020 Studies at the University of Applied Arts Photography
2020 Diploma in Photography at the University of Applied Arts

Articles about Mira Klug and her works: The Many Forms of the Past

Website Mira Klug

The portrait of the artist was photographed by Pamela Russmann.

2024
Exhibition #1 Art and Law, Lavinia Lanner, Mira Klug >>>

Exhibition brochure #1 Art and Law >>>

List of works #1 Art and law, Mira Klug >>>