 Sarah Baker
Roger Bernat
Anton Corbijn
Flavia Da Rin
Shahram Entekhabi
Andreas Kohler
Melanie Manchot
Eva Teppe
Thomas Weisskopf
Portrait – just a surface or the truth behind it? Since the beginnings of portrait as artistic genre the image of a face has been the subject of promising ascriptions: the spectator expected the portrait to tell him the truth that the mere representation of a face seemed to be hiding. For a long time the artist as well as the spectator were driven by the believe – and the hope – that the view of the surface could reveal to them the significance of the „behind“: the individuum and his personality.
This capacity of perception connected to the portrait was not only doubted since the emergence of digital photography. The challenge of the unity of the idividdum in the 80s in fact also changed the claims towards the portait: not the entity but the multiplicity, not the visible but the invisible behind every mechanical representation of men from then on formed the initial point of all artistic examination.
In our exhibition “Portraits – the view behind the make-up” we show the spectrum in form and contents of current approaches to the portrait. In diverse media like photography, video and videoinstallation the participating artists question the artistic media as well as the medium „portrait“ itself regarding its possibilities and limits. Concurrently also the spectators and his self-conception is included in this examination.
GROUND FLOOR
The photographer Anton Corbijn (Netherlands) is well known for his portraits of famous personalities in the music- and moviescene; the worldwide representation of the group U2 for instance bares his unmistakable signature. Corbijns portraits oscillate constantly between staging and hidden truth but never approach too close the represented person. Therewith they reflect not only the shining surface of the world of glamour but concurrently also question the expectations of the spectator in this regard.
The young artist Flavia Da Rin (Argentina) on the other hand confronts the spectator right from the beginning with a world of fictions. Self-portraits of the artist with wide-opened eyes gaze out of the image and at the same time open the view onto fairytale like landscapes and situations, which seem to be situated behind the mirror. In these digitally treated photographs the limits of the medium become just as evident as the limits of our reality.
The spectator and his projection are in the focus of the photo- and soundinstallation „Moscow Girls“ of Melanie Manchot (England): nine photographic portraits of young Russian girls face nine stories about personal experiences of these girls, whereas the narrative level can not clearly be assigned to one of the images. Whilst the displayed girls and their profiling in the image represent the dream of beauty and western lifestyle, the often shocking stories tell about the loss of security and the quest for meaning of a whole generation.
Independent from specific spaces Andreas Kohler (Deutschland) in his series „Alabasterbodies“ portrayes the self-perception of young adults. The body thereby serves as the mirror of the soul. Almost translucent, often just sparsely covered with clothes, the bodies – in the sense of the outer skin of the self - and the traces left there reveal the search for the own identity which neither can be found in the own body nor in the personal surroundings.
While the search for identity for the portrayed persons in the series „Cut“ by Thomas Weisskopf (Switzerland) is already secluded, for the specator it starts all over again with every contemplation. The knowledge of the transsexual identity of the portrayed women breaks with the image of a perfectly staged feminity. While the women are captured in the area of conflict between the acknowledgment of their own individual personality and the concurrent aspiration of an ideal of female beauty, the spectator is confronted with his own stereotype image of feminity and gender roles.
Likewise the question of attributions through gender qualities is posed by Sarah Baker (USA) in her installation „A portrait of Bill May“, consisting in photography and video. The synchronyzed swimmer Bill May, against whom the artist –successful in this sport herself – competed for many years, will never, despite appropriate performance, have the possibility to participate in the olympic games because of his gender. Baker caricatures these role attributions by highlighting the unsuperable chasm between the socially anquored image of the male macho and the likewise „feminised“ synchronized swimming.
VIDEOSPACE
Shahram Entekhabi (Iran) also deals with certain cliches in his performative video works. With the own experience as foreigner in Germany he traces the „image of the migrant“ in Germany in different video performances. He reflects the anxieties, prejudices and ignorance of the surrounding German society, which have become consolidated in stereotypes over the time. By citing well known signs in his video „Miguel“ he appeals to these unconscious patterns of thought and at the same time breaks up with them.
In the halls of the Prado there can be found a copy of a romantic scuplture which shows a woman, outstreched on a bed, in the moment of awakening. The proportions of the sculpture which represents a hermaphrodite, deviate from the hellenic ideal of a woman. In his video „Vero“ Roger Bernat (Spain) documents a transsexual woman, likewise in the moment of awakening. The spectator finds himself opposed to the ambigious feeling of fascination and strangeness.
Eva Teppe (Germany) closes the exhibition circuit with her videoinstallation „Omertá“. Omertá denotes the command of silence imposed onto the members of the sicilian mafia, which concurrently is applied to the population of Sicilia. On five monitors can be seen one face at a time, which, in a slow gesture and isolated from its original context, turns towards the spectator and, after a short gaze into the camera, turns away again. The exchange of gazes between the camera and the filmed person and the therewith documented interference with the personal sphere of the counter-part in the film alter the meaning of the gestures in the installation: they turn into a menacing action, not only for the filmed person but also for the spectator who quasi is persecuted by this gaze.
Tasja Langenbach
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