April 10 - May 14, 2010




Galerie Metro is announcing “Degrees of Separation”, Diana Artus’ first solo exhibition in the gallery.

In this exhibition the artist mainly deals with the surface of the photographic material, exposing the picturesque of the image as a product of desire. Artus is taking the gaze of the flaneur to extremes: with pleasure she disassembles details into even smaller fragments and reassembles them to images commenting on their own illusionary status in the sensual meaning of the word as well as in its sentimental meaning.

Photographs of dystopic urban landscapes “Inner Outer Space” (2010), apparently taken through a scratched surface, extend the illusionary space of the picture into the space of the beholder, who feels like being transferred to the other side of the scratched surface within the picture. With the density of scratches the subject of the photographic image turns to be a suggestion rather than being really existent. The image itself becomes evident as the construction of the beholder.

The stepping out itself of the image is one of the major threads of the exhibition. From the side of the real space the artist is approaching this phenomenon in the way she installs her works: A photo of an oversized billboard “I’m glad I made you cry“ (2010), showing a young woman from the back looking sensually over her shoulder, is composed of several photocopies which are slightly undulated at the margins and thus opening the surface. While this picture is still at the border between support and installation another photo “Masking“ (2010), which is taped on the wall and almost completely covered by the tape, has already crossed the border.

In a large sized work “Gizli Arzular“ (2009) - a collage of pages taken from a short picture story booklet from the 50ies - the beholder stands in the space built between two frames hanging in a corner. The artist has divided the pages in those showing the male protagonist and those showing the female protagonist. The text and the people surrounding the figures are obliterated with black permanent marker.

This work represents a status of complete disconnection: the man is separated from the woman, the text from the image, the person from the surrounded space. But also from the time, which originally evolved in the linear narrative of the short story and now is fragmented into single moments. The beholder him-/herself feels enticed to reconstruct a narrative with the remaining hints: a smile, a kiss into the black void, finally the man with a bag in his hand - a story of separation?

Or even the last picture originally has been situated at the beginning of the story? This way the artist creates awareness for different aspects of narration.

Further smaller works are also playing with the idea of Photography apearing as documentary versus apearing as staged and suggestive in addition with found footage material in text (”Monologue“, 2010) and image.

_______________________
GALERIE METRO
Wilhelmstrasse 6
10963 Berlin, Germany
www.metro-berlin.net