my gaze, your image
my image, your gaze

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Karlin Studios

Artists

Alžběta Bačíková
Alžběta Bačíková (*1988, Hodonín, CZ) mainly works with audiovisual installations. In 2018 she completed a dissertation on the topic of documentary strategies in contemporary artist moving image at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Brno University of Technology. In 2018, she won the Audience Award as part of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award for Encounter 2018. She is participating in the 2020 Prague Biennale, ‘Matter of Art’ where she presented a video Lavish Issue made together with Romany political scientist and human right activist Edita Stejskalová.

Pavel Hečko
Pavel Hečko (*1951, Černá Voda, CZ) shares the fate of a generation of young artists born in the 1950s, one that “did not want to take part in the construction of official Czechoslovak post-normalisation artistic culture and which simply felt a need for generational self-mutilation and communication with the public.” His work from the 1980’s deserves special attention. Hečko mainly deals with portraits. In his pictures he records not only the external appearance of the photographed, but also many elements of their nature and feelings. He is interested in searching for physiological and character similarities and differences – for example, the series Sisters, Twins, Inverse Portraits, in which he used the possibility of comparison on the basis of side-inverted images.

Kristin Loschert
Kristin Loschert (*1979 in Lohr am Main) is a freelance photo editor and photographer. Solo exhibitions include Boxer, Vacant, Tokyo (2016), Boxer, Galerie für moderne Fotografie, Berlin (2013), and group shows Rochade, with Lisa Herfeldt, Soy Capitán, Berlin (2019), Admit One, Angela Mewes, Berlin (2018), as well as Riemenschneider in Situ, Conference Riemenschneider in Situ, Rothenburg o.d.T., in collaboration with Heinz Peter Knes (2017), ich, du, er/sie/es and Les chroniques purple, Vacant, Tokyo (2014). 

Gundula Schulze Eldowy
Gundula Schulze Eldowy (*1954, Erfurt, DE). She studied photography at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. Her work has been internationally exhibited and published and is part of collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the LACMA in Los Angeles and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. In addition to her photographic and cinematic work, she has written stories, poems, essays and created sound collages and chants. Some of famous series: “Tamerlan”, “Berlin in einer Hundenacht” (Berlin on a Dog's Night),“Aktportrait” (Nude Portrait),“Der Wind füllt sich mit Wasser” (The wind fills itself with water).  1985 first encounter with the American photographer Robert Frank, who invites her to New York in 1990. "Spinning on my Heels" (series), Die Wahrheit ist eine versunkene Stadt” (The truth is a sunken city)(film).

Shelly Silver
Shelly Silver (*1957, Brooklin, USA) works with the still and moving image. Her work explores contested territories between public and private, narrative and documentary, and - increasingly in recent years - the watcher and the watched. She has exhibited worldwide, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Yokohama Museum, the London ICA. Her films have been broadcast by BBC/England, Arte/Germany, Planete/Europe, RTE/Ireland, SWR/Germany, and Atenor/Spain, among others, and she has been a fellow at the DAAD Artists Program in Berlin, the Japan/US Artist Program in Tokyo, Cité des Arts in Paris, and at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Gabriele Stötzer
Gabriele Stötzer (*1953, Emleben, DE) studied at the teacher training college in Erfurt where, in the mid-1970s, she was expelled on political grounds and imprisoned for a year. She began working as a freelance artist in 1980. In 1989, she was co-initiator of the first occupation of a Stasi (East German secret police) headquarters in Erfurt. Since 1990, she has published eight books and taken part in international exhibitions. She also teaches performance classes at the University of Erfurt and holds lectures on subjects such as feminist art and on being a contemporary witness.

Curators

Stephanie Kiwitt
Anna Voswinckel
Tereza Rudolf

Opening

13/10/2020  7 pm

Duration

14/10–6/12 2020

Venue

Karlin Studios
Prvního pluku 20/2, Prague 8
Wed–Sun 1pm–6pm

Visualizing intimate encounters: What do I seek in my portrait subject? What does the way of capturing the other reveal about myself? As Shelley Silver sets out to photograph moments of intimacy, in her video essay she reflects the camera gaze as a mediator between the desire for the other and the control of the image. In his series of double portraits, Pavel Hečko synchronizes his vision of the portrayed with their self-perception, reflecting the pose as a means of communicating with the viewer. During her photoshoot of Winfried, a young man who poses in drag, Gabriele Stötzer felt a connection with her model. Like herself he was considered “different” by the GDR authorities, a condition that also made him susceptible: as Stötzer later learned, he had been informing on her to the Stasi (secret police). Kristin Loschert’s photo sessions with strangers grew out of her desire to capture an image of a certain young man. The chosen mode of presentation – stacks of photographs – visualize the deficiencies of the portrayal. Reflecting the uneven relationship of artist and model, Gundula Schulze Eldowy discloses the conversations with her long-time portrait model Tamerlan in a documentary film, showing their encounters over the years. As we hear the much younger artist collating her own experience with that of her model, we witness Tamerlan’s incomparable misery. Questions of uneven access lead Alžběta Bačíková to experiment with audiovisual forms of translating her work to differently challenged audiences. Her audiovisual installation documents an encounter between a blind and a deaf person, rendered possible despite their conflicting conditions. By splitting the recording into a visual and an audible part the artist shows an alternative narrative for individual experience apart from the sound-image-synchronicity of conventional film. So the question is not only what we’re looking for (as Silver poses it), but as well: by which means, for who, or regardless for whom are we able and willing to get the message across?

Press release

 

 

Shelly Silver: What I’m Looking For

2009, 10 min

 

Alžběta Bačíková: Encounter

Cast:
Terezie – Alena Terezie Vítek
Mac – Mac Henzl
Audio description – Zuzana Stivínová
Interpreter – Naďa Hynková Dingová

Camera: Martin Štěpánek
Sound: Jakub Jurásek, Ian Mikyska
Editing: Kristýna Bartošová
Piano and vocals: Ráchel Skleničková
Music and lyrics for Pretty Hands Pretty Face: Ian Mikyska
Dance scene choreography: Mish Rais
Written by: Alžběta Bačíková and Mac Henzl in collaboration with other video participants
Translation and revision of Czech Sign Language: Naďa Hynková Dingová
English translation: Ian Mikyska
Image correction: Tomáš Hájek

The work features excerpts from Gustav Machatý’s film From Saturday to Sunday (1931).
The scenes from Villa Rothmayer were shot by courtesy of the City of Prague Museum.

The Fotograf Festival is organised by the Fotograf 07 z.s., and held under the auspices of the Mayor of Prague, and with the support of the City Council of Prague (400 000 CZK), the Czech Ministry of Culture and State Fund of Culture.

Mediální partneři / Medial partners