Sarah Gerats
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Work from her oeuvre.
There is shockingly little written about Sarah Gerats, though her work seems to pop up in quite a few places. Aesthetically, she fits easily in her native land (The Netherlands) and the great majority of her works follow the aesthetic and conceptual concerns of contemporary Dutch meta-photographic works. The two most easily accessible example are her series Her and the very soothing Meanwhile-Landscapes, both of which challenge the tradition of their genre. The self-portraits from Her employ the awkward pseudo-sexual aesthetic that seems to be a fashion throwback to the early 80’s while addressing notions of gaze, reflexivity, and the role of artist as performer. Meanwhile-Landscapes deals with very similar conceptual concerns (to a degree) in the gentle flowing diptychs of serene landscapes. The works, much like Her, mirror (pun totally intended) the traditional role of the landscape photograph and allow the viewer to experience the landscape as a simulacrum of reality, moving the photograph simultaneously beyond mechanical reproduction while at the same time fixing reality in miniature.