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Exhibitions

MIRIAM BAJTALA / JUDITH HUEMER / LORETTA LUX

7. October 2003 – 5. November 2003

Miriam Bajtala (AT), Judith Huemer (AT), Loretta Lux (DE)

The three artists are dealing with identities in certain contexts and spaces, whereby the line between reality and fiction/dream/fairy tale can not be drawn clearly. In their works lies a surrealistic element which is sometimes charming and sometimes uncanny.

Judith Huemer uses motives from the fairy tale “Rapunzel” by Gebrüder Grimm and brings them in relation to her own life in a clever and opportune way. The artist as protagonist does not represent the endless, longing waiting at the window. On the contrary, Huemer finds her own way to freedom by going on her travel.
Single pictures are put into the continuous film to make different sequences perceptible at the same time.
Processes, dreams, thoughts and everyday situations are revealed to the viewer. The video is projected on an oversized balloon, a bubble of the moment that colours the picture rosy. The highboard, the ladder and the human figure are the carriers of the projection.

In her portrait Loretta Lux is putting the predominant cliché of childhood in question. Against the expectations of the viewer, the models she chooses for her works are pale and seem very fragile. In their spiritual beauty the children seem to descend from a pretersensual atmosphere. Using computer-controlled processing, the artist forms the photographic material to an idealised symbol. Instead of portraying the model as child, Loretta Lux plays with the ambivalence between the desires of a child and the presentiment of the world of the adults.

Miriam Bajtala is dealing with the interior and the exterior, the body and the surface, space and time in their visual as well as their conceptual meanings. She is particularly interested in the blurring of the line between these notions. In her video “so als ob” she plays with the space in which the actress moves by confusing the interior and the exterior. She controls her figures like marionettes with invisible threads, their expression is manipulated by the computer. She also handles text in a similar manner. New sentences are constantly formed, new meanings are created by shifting words. An easy and funny as well as nasty and aggressive atmosphere is coming into being which gets along without words.