After returning from years of war coverage, Peter van Agtmael tries to piece together the memory, identity, race, class, and family, in a landscape which has become as surreal as the war he left behind.
•
Photo Dawin Meckel
Alexandra Baumgartner
Artist
Alexandra Baumgartner’s works are mostly based on found photographs as well as furniture and everyday objects.
Through minimal interventions, juxtapositions and spatial arrangements, she places her mostly anonymous source material in new contexts. Her work extends across different media (collage, installation, painting and object art) and to downright conceptual approaches.
Historical portraits are regularly the subject of her interventions. Images get materially cut or sewn, painted over, and sometimes a new layer of “behind” is opened by burning parts of the image. It is often subliminal tones that Baumgartner is looking for: premonitions, absurd and disturbing moments, a disquieting atmosphere.
The material is examined autopsy-like. Baumgartner’s interest is not in the original context of the source material, but rather in finding a new content, a view of hidden abysses. It is an analysis and elaboration of the fragile relationships between deeply personal feelings and external constraints, between nature, which determines man, who again tries to control them, but remains basically nevertheless inferior.
•
RELATED ARTICLES
-
UPHA Made in UkraineUkrainian Photographic Alternative
UPHA Made in Ukraine is the first book published by BOOKSHA. The work on the project started in 2017. The book is the result of creative work by the participants of the Ukrainian Photographic Alternative group. (more…)
-
Zahrin KahloPhoto / Video Artist
Zahrin Kahlo is originally Moroccan but lives and works in Italy as a photographer and video artist. She pursued classical studies, receiving a degree in Foreign Literature. After graduating she began to travel fascinated by countries described by her favorite writers… (more…)
-
Bayil – Behind The HillsBayil, Baku
On the horizon of the district between old, handmade fences and the sky, you can see the newly built glass skyscrapers in the bright light of the coastal center of the city, as if portending future innovations of Bayil. (more…)
-
The Post-War DreamJourney into the Anthropocene
In the late summer of 2016, I spent six weeks in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region where I documented the transformation of some of the most influential cities in the region: Ordos, Hohhot, and Baotou. While looking back on the images I had taken, I was unexpectedly reminded of post-war Italian cinema (more…)
-
Chantal JoffeArtist
Chantal Joffe brings a combination of insight and integrity, as well as psychological and emotional force, to the genre of figurative art. Hers is a deceptively casual brushstroke. (more…)
-
Fly in League with the NightLynette Yiadom-Boakye
Fly in League with the Night is the largest survey to date of the work of British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The exhibition presents 67 paintings spanning two decades. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye makes figurative paintings drawn from a variety of source material. Her figures inhabit deliberately enigmatic settings that are timeless and often abstract. (more…)
-
ARTPIL / Work OpportunitiesPositions available
Artpil is seeking to expand the team. From contributors to freelance individuals in Rome, and beyond, whether you are a writer, photographer, designer/art director, we want to hear from you.
