Caroline Heider
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Work from her oeuvre.
Caroline Heider bases her work on existing pictures, on a public world of images which is conveyed in magazines, for example. Media-related images are a reality of their own and have their reflexive effect on the world. The artist’s interests focus on this process and the social and cultural context of the pictures. In particular, she examines the question of how pictures function in the context of artistic production. Caroline Heider adopts strange pictures for her works, she removes them from their contexts and reproduces and processes them.
A decisive »trick« in this process is the fact that she folds them: in contrast with the method of collage, combining parts of cut-out pictures, the area of folded pictures remains in principle intact – as deliberate action the fold creates a two-dimensional picture body, in whose »shadow« parts of the picture still exist, even though they are hidden. Often, pictures of fragmented (women’s) bodies are created in this way, while the social meaning of the (fashion)accessories coding the body within society are highlighted. In the case of the »Pelzchen«- series showcased in the exhibition, Elfie Semotan’s models are derived from a printed catalogue of the Liska fur shop. The caption says Elfi-Semotan-Series, referring to the grande dame of Austrian (fashion) photography. Elfi Semotan got the idea for this advertisement through a volume of paintings in which she saw works by Raphael. The poses of the advertising catalogue are based on the painterly model. Thus the line between art and advertisement is not clear in Semotan’s work, in contrast to Heider’s.” – Rainer Iglar