Weekend Focus: Viktoria Binschtok

Viktoria Binschtok’s takeover week is being closed with a special Weekend Focus. Please enjoy a small selection of her works as well as selected exhibition views.

„The inaugural edition foregrounds practices that acknowledge the fluctuating and networked condition of contemporary photography and society more generally, while also articulating a keen sensitivity towards the history of photography and art. Abstraction, digital and manual collage, new configurations of still life and the human body are key tendencies. The works on view are produced within the last three years and several are exhibited for the first time. (…)„

„Mit ortsspezifischen Konzepten und über Bild- oder Zeitausschnitt, selektiven Schärfebereich, Licht- und Farbregie et cetera kann künstlerische Fotografie das Gesehene formalisieren und Gegenwärtigkeit erscheinen lassen – umso mehr, wenn sie dabei gleichermaßen die renitente Wirklichkeit an Ort und Stelle behauptet wie die Brüchigkeit und Subjektivität ihrer eigenen Konstruktion. (…)„

„In the knowledge that our society is exposed to a never-ending stream of digital images day by day, Viktoria Binschtok reflects in her highly aesthetic photographic work on the medium of photography itself. Apart from her own photographs, the artist also makes use of images she finds on the internet and other media. She enters into a dialogue with the algorithms of image search engines and thus raises fundamental questions about how we deal with pictures, their source and their social and political functions. Who takes pictures? Who uses them in order to illustrate what? How does the perspective on a picture change depending on how, when and for what purpose it is presented? (…)„

„A photo is a photo is a photo. Always. It is not a representation of reality but merely a visual reference to an individually lived presence and the starting point for new associations. The viewers seek familiar patterns in the photographic image, take note of well-known colours, ascertain the context and in this way construct their own image with a new meaning. This complex process of reception has been researched often enough. So far, everything familiar. However, what happens when the author of a photos does not exist at all? When there is no clear intention? When reality as a point of reference is not verifiable? And when associations arise from a purely mechanical algorithm? With a fascinating charade of digital reality and analogue virtuality, Viktoria Binschtok challenges familiar ways of seeing and materialises the flood of images generated by the Internet or rather dematerializes reality. (…)“