One represented by the other.

Swiss artist Raphael Langmair (1985) shows in his first solo exhibition 'One represented by the other' a great interest in the transgression of an object to its image. Various reproduction techniques and display strategies are brought together in settings of temporality and vulnerability. A splash sculpture 'Untitled' (2011) is both an event and installation, which seems to be in a frozen moment before collapsing. A work 'Empty pockets' (2011) shows a heap of items taken out of the artist's pocket, photographed in a sequence of moments. These five small photos on the gallery floor give the impression that the event is (partly) being recreated. A depicted inkfish in screen print, called 'One represented by the smell of another' (2011), is printed with ink of another inkfish. Part of reality is brought back into the image, i.e. including the slowly disappearing smell of fish.
In the painting 'Ceçi n'est pas une pipe' of René Magritte the three-dimensional object was being looked at as either it is there or not. In Langmair's case certain elements of each reproduced object are preserved. Here the artist searches a soft area between the two positions. He says: "For me photography essentially is organized paint. It presents the flat illusion of space "there"- while sculpture deals with the physical "here" of the object or event. It seems that I become more and more used to a continuous change from a physical space to imaginary space and back again."

Raphael Langmair is interested in how movements, events and gestures become form, without loosing its spontaneous, inventive and contingent nature. In this way the artist could be called a neo-romanticist trying to keep pace with chance, purity and generosity found in reality, which he gives form by making use of sculptural photography, smelling prints and frozen events.




hier komt een persbericht in het Nederlands