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Angelos Gavrias, 2006, Untitled – from the series Social Strip, photographic print | | |
WHAT MAKES ME HAPPY
The subject of the photographic unity "what makes me happy" is the aesthetics of people's living spaces and lived time, as an expression ranging from the collective scale (architectural mega constructions) to the singular scale (level-of interferance on the human body)
The artists focus on the present (time) and the way this is experienced by the individual, the way he behaves in relation to time and to his own self, man in a race against time sliding by.
The individual, with nervous dialectics between the self, being/becoming and the desires of his existence, who tries to oppose the unconscious induction in the social group, to overthrow it.
The architecture in Christiane Scheidt's photographs is reminiscent of present-day towers of Babylon, monuments which suggest eternity. They speak of power and money, creations of people in an epoch during which the planet is walking a tight-rope and human existense (Dasein) is characterised by precarious opportunities.
Photographs which uncover people in private and collective situations. They bodies record personal histories, allowing a weakness to surface -of being/becoming in time.
The body is a medium used in order to make contact and social connections, ("Brust,Bauch,Beine" [trsl.n."Breast, Belly, Legs"] by Cornelius Popovici), to bring money and assist in making dreams come true ("Social Strip" by Angelos Gavrias).
The body stigmatised by the merciless hunting for success and confirmation/approval, verifies the failure and decay of the individual in time ("i cento passi" by Cornelius Popovici), the covered in diamonds and haute couture collapse ("High Society by Angelos Gavrias), the metamorphosis/paramorphosis of the body in cultural capital ("Beauty" by Ewelyn Kwasny)
In contrast to this, the series "Camper II" by Antje Hoefer, reveals living spaces where the dramatic absense of people reaches the threshold of pain: enclosed spaces where uprooting and rehabilitation dominate, dream fragments of a peaceful, unthreatened life, "reserve homes" -difficult to place in time- where life has already gone full circle. Places which act as islands of group activity.
How do I become happy? How do I move? Who do I want to be?
The right to existense, inclusion, completion or to break off/marginalise, the restless search -on the horizon of a society in which religions are relative and personalised, while future visions, mythologies and utopias are absent.
The need for something new, singular and collective to be created in their place enlarges the gap.
The artists record living spaces as expressions of lived time, paths of "beaten" existenses and reveal the consequences of the individual's fall in time, "beaten" but only seemingly living on the margins.
On their bodies is mapped out the misery of an age that subjects itself to the myth of money.
What makes me happy?
Apostolos Palavrakis
Dortmund 3/2008
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.jpg "Contemporary Istanbul")
.jpg "Red Dot Miami")
