Exhibition
Photogramatic works from the SpallArt Collection
Heinz Hajek-Halke
"Das unbekannte Tor (Lichtgraphik)", 1956
Photogram gelatin silver, 29 x 20 cm
Margit Zuckriegl
A journey to the beginnings of photography
Right at the time when we faced the crisis of photography and the digital age began, artists refocused on the origins of the photographic picture production in their medial research. Among the earliest experiments around mid of the 19th century were nature printings and calotypes/talbotypes; until the eponymous “inventions” of Christian Schad (Schadography), Man Ray (Rayogram) and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (photogram) around the 1920s, one searched for possibilities and principles of light-drawing ("photogenic drawing"): the work in the darkroom, the aspects of immanent processes of photography, the characteristics of brightness and darkness, of transparent and opaque materials – artists of the 1950s and 1960s experiment with these processes like photo pioneers, while artists of the 1980s and 1990s reduce their imagery to the point, being uncorrectable, the authenticity of the depictive function of photography.
The exhibiton
The exhibition "Pictures without a camera" at the Eboran Gallery in Salzburg, curated by Margit Zuckriegl, comprises 50 works from the SpallArt Collection based on this direct, cameraless imagery. In addition to "classic" examples by Heinz Hajek-Halke, Pierre Cordier and Floris Neusüss, series and single pictures by Leo Kandl and Wolfgang Reichmann, among others, from the 1990s until today are shown. The experimental character of the works is paramount, reaching to specific or abstract visualisations, pictorial processes and spacial constructions. Especially the works of the "generative photography" by Herbert W. Franke, Gottfried Häger and Hein Gravenhorst – all of them amazing finds in the usual mass of photographs – are characterized by their uncompromising, conceptive approach.
The nature of the photogram
An object, directly placed on a light-sensitive carrier material and exposed, depicts itself without the use of optics, lenses or a camera and proves its existence and vividness – apparently against the usual principles of photography, as photograms and chemigrams are not reproducible, not enlargeable or reduceable, not manipulable. All of them are – in case no internegative or scan is used – unique ones and exceptional originals.
A focus in the SpallArt Collection
The SpallArt Collection comprises a remarkable fundus of photograms and/or pictures, created without camera technology. These are some experimental works from the early days of the history of photography as well as, in dialogical addition, bundles from contemporary artists, who deal with the main ideas and theories of the photo-reflective rhetorics or transmit these into actual concepts.
Artists in the exhibition
Pierre Auradon, Kilian Breier, Pierre Cordier, Alfons Eggert, Michael Flomen, Herbert W. Franke, Federico Grandicelli, Hein Gravenhorst, Esther Hagenmeier, Heinz Hajek-Halke, Heinrich Heidersberger, Karl Martin Holzhäuser, Gottfried Jäger, Leo Kandl, Běla Kolářová, Edgar Lissel, René Mächler, Thomas Hoepke & Heinz Mack, Anja Manfredi, Julie Monaco, Floris Michael Neusüss, Wendy Paton, Constantin Freiherr von Ettingshausen & Alois Pokorny, Wolfgang Reichmann, Werner Schnelle, Fritz Simak, Todd Watts und Robert Zahornicky
August 15 to September 20, 2019
Eboran Galerie, Salzburg
Ignaz-Harrer-Straße 38
5020 Salzburg
opening:
August 14, 2019, 7 pm
opening times:
Thuesday to Friday, 6 to 8 pm
closing event:
September 20, 6 to 8 pm
Exhibition catalogue