KARIN SCHMUCK
Karin Schmuck
CLOSE
Vernissage, 30th October 2019
October 31 – November 25 2019
Press release
comunicato stampa
Pressetext
Karin Schmuck’s sets of photographs should be interpreted as a continuation of her personal take on a genre – the portrait – in painting and in photography itself.
At a second glance, her images, redolent for composition and choice of colours of classical portraiture, acquire a certain dose of crypticality. The systematic concealment of the face and extreme framing constantly prevent the observer from seeing the subject’s gaze. In this way, the artist consciously withdraws the most important information, distracting our attention onto peripheral elements such as posture, gesture and minor details that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Karin Schmuck elevates this absence into a method, an attempt, which she interprets as an attempt to create – in the constant flow of images that characterises our everyday life – unconventional photographs that cause surprise, but also, in some respects, hurt. Only at a second glance do her pictures allow themselves to be decoded and reveal their multidimensional nature.
Her groups photographs conjure up islands that seem to live in a world of their own in a strong symbiotic relationship, far removed from the observer.
In the works composed of different parts, small variations in almost identical images transmit profoundly different messages to achieve conflicting results. Karin Schmuck plays with symbols that first evoke associations directly, only to retract them straight after. The ambivalence of these anti-portraits invites and stimulates observers, surrounded by visual contradictions and information, to find their own personal interpretations.
The title, CLOSE, is itself polisemic, hence might also signify ‘finish’, ‘dense’, ‘near’ or ‘familiar’.
Karin Schmuck (*1981, Bozen) studies painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Urbino and Photography at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna.
Numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad, im In- und Ausland, amongst others at the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche (Pu), the Centro per la Fotografia d’Autore (Ar) and the Villa Brandolini (Tv); winner of diverse prizes, such as Combat Prize 2017 and Premio Carlo Gajani 2018.
2005–2007 she lives in Vienna, 2010–2017 in Bologna, extended stays for studies and work in Tanzania, Peru, Spain und Morocco.