This past
November Brad Feuerhelm was invited on behalf of 1000 Words to attend the
Vienna Portfolio reviews held at the Leopold Museum in central Vienna, Austria. Here
he reports on his findings.
Among the
standout artists and photographers who came to meet with me were the following
for whom you may research at your leisure. Sara-Lena
Maierhofer for her
book on an infamous imposter. Krisztina
Fazekas-Kielbassa
whose emotional and poignant series on her mother and the troubles of growing
up with a conflicting notion of love was exceptional in every regard and it
deservedly won the portfolio award. Ernst Logar’s petroleum economic studies and further
investigations of unseen power structures merit serious consideration. Klaus
Pichler’s series
on Austrian pub life and his former body of work on a criminal underclass were
also spectacular. My personal favorite was Magda
Hueckel’s Anima
series for which you can expect further reportage, on the matter in the future.
And then there
was Martin Stöbich, whose simple
yet elegant photo books quickly caught my interest. Stöbich is a professional
photographer working mostly in colour with a sort of current practice based on
a post Parr observation of the hidden symbolic metaphor of the seemingly banal.
He has published several small photography books with a superb eye for minimal
typeface and editing. Think of the cover for A Brief History of Curating by Hans Ulrich-Obrist and you’ll get
the idea of the design direction of the object.
Within the majority
of the newspaper-bound lilliputian books are works by Stöbich himself. In
particular, Wo Nehman Wir Nur Jeden Tag Aufs Neue Diese Zuversicht Her stood out as it was by far the most
conceptually driven of the four books I was given. It is a fantastic pastiche
of contemporary culture as it relates to the pandering of sexuality on the male
hetero-psyche in the digital age of instant access and satisfaction.
Appropriating online pornography, Stöbich
has superimposed a series of brightly coloured texts onto the image while
keeping the background photograph monotone. The viewer is required to look forcefully
through and beyond the lettering in order to see the erotic imagery underneath.
Through simplicity of
means, it makes the ocular ingestion of the base image a very complicated read
since the viewer is forced to “see” the pornography through forced suggestion.
It separates the layers of meaning and representation that are at odds with the
potential libidinous gesture lurking below. The scathing psychological games of
viewing at play with the overlayed words such as “SERIOUSLY” and “I KNOW THAT
YOU KNOW THAT I KNOW THAT YOU KNOW” leap optically from the page to challenge
our passing interests in the female subject.
In a manner similar
to Ed Ruscha and Thomas Ruff the work then forces a contemporary reckoning with
our understanding of internet and telecommunications and with the abjection our
own bodies and minds can feel whilst absorbing the true conceptual or
intellectual content of sex-and-image driven internet. It could be argued then that
photography itself is not the language, but perhaps the combination of corporal
desire to that of machine output. All in, the book offers a passing commentary
on the absurdity of viewing pleasures and the use of material sourced from the internet is perfect fodder for this sort of short examination.
Brad Feuerhelm
