Mag­da­lena Wos­inska: “JOHN BALDESSARI …”

The female nude as a sub­ject of art history is as old as art its­elf. Its inte­gra­tion into diverse ico­no­gra­phic sys­tems was pos­si­ble because nudity was trans­por­ted into a nar­ra­tive func­tio­na­liza­tion that made eros seem to appear at best as an acces­sory that to some extent domesti­ca­ted; and it, the­reby, mana­ged to become a basis for a gene­ral social accep­tance. Con­ver­sely, the appa­rent lack of a content-legitimized con­text cau­ses the viewer’s dis­con­cer­tion. Yet, nudity is per se less capable of trig­ge­ring any irri­ta­tion from the viewer who them­sel­ves addres­ses the issue of per­mis­sion to con­sider a “func­tion­less” nude in good con­sci­ence.
In response to this dilemma, the Los Angeles-based com­mer­cial pho­to­gra­pher Mag­da­lena Wos­inska has taken a clear posi­tion with regard to her series “Nudes”: con­cerning her nude images, which she her­self sta­ged in brea­thta­king land­scapes, her only inte­rest is the lin­king of human ele­ments with nature as por­tra­yals of tim­e­l­ess beauty. If the model her­self were asso­cia­ted with a par­ti­cu­lar ori­gin or assi­gned to a par­ti­cu­lar social class or group based on her clot­hing, this would result in a dis­trac­tion from the actual sub­ject of the image. Apart from this, Wos­inska pre­fe­ra­bly tra­vels unac­com­pa­nied to the most beau­ti­ful pla­ces in the world so that more often than not she will be left to her own devices as her own sui­ta­ble model. Above all it seems remar­ka­ble how the land­scape is rein­ter­pre­ted: it ans­we­red the artist through a con­scious, phy­si­cal con­fron­ta­tion with the local con­di­ti­ons, so that a dia­lo­gue bet­ween the human form and the land­scape ensues. The inser­tion of the nude ener­ge­ti­cally char­ges the loca­tion and trans­forms it into an actively par­ti­ci­pa­ting sphere of the pic­to­rial nar­ra­tive.
The artist has cho­sen a selec­tion of works from her series “Nudes” for her third artist’s book entit­led “The Expe­ri­ence, Vol. 1.” Twenty-one pho­to­graphs from the exhi­bi­tion with the tongue-in-cheek title “John Bal­des­sari, Will You Curate My Show?” are com­pi­led wit­hin this book. After huge suc­cess in Los Ange­les and Lon­don, her works are now on dis­play in the Gal­lery for Con­tem­porary Pho­to­gra­phy in Munich through the end of July.