deKoe   Gantar   Vogt   Zalenga

In its second exhi­bi­tion of the new year, the Ingo Seu­fert Gal­lery brings toge­ther four posi­ti­ons in con­tem­porary pho­to­gra­phy. A total of 19 photo prints by Käthe deKoe (Munich), Eva Gantar (Vienna and Feldkirch/Vorarlberg), Kor­bi­nian Vogt (Munich) and Laura Zalenga (Rot­ter­dam) can be seen.

Munich-based artist Käthe deKoe (b. 1984) has become a fixed term to the public, spe­ci­fi­cally through her image-based reporting of Munich’s pop and rock con­certs in the music maga­zine LAX­mag. To her, land­scape pho­to­gra­phy means pri­ma­rily focu­sing on an inspec­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion of the urban and rural areas in and around Munich. Howe­ver, four pre­viously unseen works from 2017 to 2023 are dedi­ca­ted to Venice and Morocco, whe­reby the motion blur crea­ted during the recor­ding with the camera only pro­vi­des peri­pheral infor­ma­tion that enab­les a geo­gra­phi­cal loca­tion of the selec­ted motif. On the other hand, the viewer fabri­ca­tes arche­typal views, in com­pa­ri­son with the real cir­cum­stan­ces and reconstructs – as it were – men­tal images, fed by know­ledge and expe­ri­ence. These reconstruc­tions are ulti­mately fan­tasy visi­ons, which con­se­quently do not require a “liken­ess” or an empi­ri­cal veri­fi­ca­tion. Whe­ther the English Gar­den, an S-Bahn mez­za­nine, or the foot­hills of the Alps deli­ver the con­crete motive remains irre­le­vant. Rather, the visual and struc­tu­ral pro­per­ties shove them­sel­ves to the fore­ground. The liken­ess sug­gests the image and beco­mes inde­pen­dent as an auto­no­mous work of art, which its­elf – in turn – can be char­ged with the viewer’s memo­ries and emo­ti­ons, with the aim of a proac­tive con­fron­ta­tion bet­ween rea­lity and pho­to­gra­phic reality.

For the archi­tect and pho­to­gra­pher Eva Gantar, the tran­sitory moment and the shift in space and time, influ­enced by the type of pho­to­graph, are an essen­tial part of her work. With sen­si­ti­vity and humor, she draws our atten­tion to absen­ces, objects and pla­ces with pecu­liar syn­er­gies and the unusual moments that arise from them. Her new series “Squeeze me tight” are tem­porary objects con­sis­ting of thirty kit­chen spon­ges. They were remo­ved from their sur­roun­dings and made into prot­ago­nists of her pho­to­gra­phic works. Left lying there as expres­sed, often unno­ti­ced, they were collec­ted in kit­chens, sani­tary rooms of apart­ments, stu­dios, hotels, restau­rants and other public insti­tu­ti­ons and pho­to­gra­phed with a medium for­mat camera. Sen­si­tively and seis­mo­gra­phi­cally, they reflect the ener­ge­tic state of mind of their crea­tors and are a lite­ral expres­sion of the fact that every action, no mat­ter how sub­tle, lea­ves its mark. “As I review the events of my past life I rea­lize how sub­tle are the influ­en­ces that shape our desti­nies.” (Nikola Tesla).

The six works by the young pho­to­gra­pher Kor­bi­nian Vogt rep­re­sent his cen­tral image theme, the female nude in front of a wildly roman­tic natu­ral back­drop. Toge­ther with his female models, he hikes through the care­fully selec­ted, mostly Nor­dic loca­ti­ons and then pho­to­graphs them as nudes in front of brea­thta­king moun­tain back­drops or in inhos­pi­ta­ble ice land­scapes. The urgent ine­vi­ta­bi­lity of this motif makes it clear that it‘s ulti­mately viru­lent inner images that the artist visua­li­zes. That aes­the­ti­cally exag­ge­ra­ted truth of rep­re­sen­ta­tion lends his pho­to­gra­phic works a magic beyond authen­ti­city that the viewer can­not escape, they “brace them­sel­ves against being lost and the­reby open up a visual level full of little mira­cles. His mira­cles — bet­ween soli­lo­quy and tales ”(Olaf Unverzart).

Equip­ped with an inex­haus­ti­ble wealth of ideas, Laura Zalenga inces­santly ques­ti­ons her­self, trans­la­ting sen­si­ti­vi­ties, phy­si­cal chan­ges and inju­ries as well as spa­tial situa­ti­ons into an indi­vi­dual visual lan­guage that is given addi­tio­nal atmo­s­phe­ric den­sity with the help of digi­tal image pro­ces­sing. The artist avo­ids the dan­ger of fal­ling into irre­le­vant, sur­real bizarre sce­nes by crea­ting begui­ling pic­ture ideas to which the cho­sen means are natu­rally sub­ordi­nate. Por­traits and self-portraits are jux­t­a­po­sed with nar­ra­tive sta­gings in the great out­doors — or in front of a mono­chrome gray wall. All in all, Zalenga’s works are cha­rac­te­ri­zed by a calm mood and clear visual archi­tec­ture. She her­self descri­bes her style as „silently pas­sio­nate“. The sce­nes, often rich in con­trasts and bathed in cold colors, are remi­nis­cent of the visual aes­the­tics of Tim Burton’s films as well as the style of the Twi­light film series. Zalenga was an Adobe Crea­tive Resi­dent in 2018/2019. Four of the six avail­able prints can be seen for the first time as part of the exhi­bi­tion, with the artist sta­ging her­self as her own model in a spec­ta­cu­lar land­scape or allo­wing her own body to become the sculpture-like sub­ject of the pic­ture.