"untitled"

C-print on aluminium

signed, numbered (ink) and label with title and date on verso

Angelika Krinzinger has done it again. Searched for traces. And found them. This time in the forest. She says. She has no proof of this. If you look at her new series Woodnotes and get really close to the pictures, you might not see the wood for the trees. If they are trees at all. Isn't this one picture there a macro shot of a mountain range of chocolate ice cream on which a glacier of lemon ice cream winds tenaciously, flanked by a hint of pistachio dust that marks the frayed tree line of this sweet topography. And there, doesn't this shot show the forehead of an aged elephant closing its eyes, tired of the noisy hustle and bustle of the Indian folk festival? To mark the special day, the old giant was painted white and red. That Barbie pink in the next picture: peeling off countless irregular shingles. Is it the dress of a thousand-year-old fish creature from unexplored depths peering into Angelika Krinzinger's camera? Or is it the image of a cell that no scientist has ever seen under a microscope? And where might the photographer have taken the picture of this weathered stone floor? A trail of blood runs across the uneven slabs. It looks as if it had been drawn with a brush by a Chinese master artist. Where does it lead? To a murder? To the forest? Into the forest where Angelika Krinzinger claims to have photographed signs on trees, property boundaries or forestry authority markings that could mean the death sentence for the tree in question. Whatever one may see, these works also show painting. Anonymous painting that gives unsigned signs and demands decisions, as life does: go on, turn off, stop, turn around, press the shutter release. Or not. With her Woodnotes, Angelika Krinzinger shows once again how profound surfaces can be. She has found traces. Yes. Where they lead is up to the viewer. And that is a good thing.
(Michael G. Hausenblas, translated by deepl)

Trees are marked for various reasons. On the one hand to mark places, for example to demarcate properties or indicate paths, on the other hand to mark the trees themselves, for example to signal pest infestation or clearance for felling. In any case, what the markings have in common is that they are there to create order and clarity when you can no longer see the wood for the trees. In other words, they bring structure to nature and make it usable.
The photographs themselves show the rough surfaces of the trees covered in paint. They are cropped to suggest the flatness of a canvas, but this is broken by the depth of field at the edges of the photograph and in the bark. The l'art pour l'art of painting is counteracted here by the functionality of the markings, which are only drawn into the twilight of abstraction through the filter of the photograph. The artistic style of a characteristic stroke disappears here in favor of the gesture of marking, which in turn remains as a reference to the influence of man.
(Krinzinger Gallery, translated by deepl)