Anna Ostoya, Mixed Pseudomorphism of a True/False Cry. 2010, source: www.moma.org
Artists invited to this year's edition of New Photography will present work that appeals to experiences dealing with photomontage, film, music and science. This approach is their attempt to change the interpretation of what a picture can be. As the exhibit's curator Roxana Marcoci explains:
The artists in this exhibition explore reversals between abstraction and representation, documentary and conceptual processes, the uniquely handmade and the mechanically reproducible, analogue and digital techniques.
Regardless of formal experimentation, the artists participating in the New Photography 2013 exhibition will provide material that is pertinent to contemporary world problems and issues.
Anna Ostoya is originally from Kraków and currently lives in New York City. Her work combines painting and text into montages and her contribution includes images from the collection Autopis. Notatki, kopie i arcydzieła / Autopis. Notes, Copies and Masterpieces. This project was first presented in Warsaw’s Foksal Gallery. The focus of her studies is a reflection on art that takes particular interest in the avant-garde and the role of women in 20th-century culture.
"Ostoya questions the photographic image as a purveyor of memory and symbol of modern culture", Marcoci says, "and opens up history to uncharted narrative paths”. The curator compares the artist's work to an avant-garde movement in sculpture that began with Edward Krasiński. In 1968, Krasiński began marking spaces with lines of blue tape, which became an emblem for the artist.
In describing Ostoya’s “pseudomorphic” method of creating collages, Marcoci talks of how she “pairs visually similar subjects into compelling new images.”
This process is illustrated by the statements she makes by using images of Brigitte Bardot with Kalina Jędrusik, or Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis with Nina Andrycz. The artists also uses stills from the Luis Buñuel film An Andalusian Dog as well as Untitled by David Wojnarowicz.
Anna Ostoya, Untitled (Scroll) 2011, source: www.moma.org
The New York Times called Ostoya exceptional in their review and went on to describe how “her mostly small, black-and-white collages and montages address certain social and political concerns with a directness that is refreshing amid so much obliquity”. The Times also complimented her on the ability to deliver a joke with a straight face, contrasting this to the other material in the exhibition that seems devoid of humour.
Anna Ostoya (born 1978) has studied in Paris, Frankfurt and New York. Her works have been shown in galleries including Manifesta 7 in Rovereto, Italy (2008), the Athens Biennale (2009), the Lisson Gallery in London (2009) and Kronika Gallery in Bytom, Poland (2010).
View the artists works and listen to her commentary here.
New Photography 2013 will also showcase the work of Britain’s Josephine Pryde and Eileen Quinlan from the U.S. These women employ formal experimentation in dealing with social problems. Germany’s Annette Kelm takes another approach to social commentary by parodying commercial photography.
Adam Broomberg is from South Africa and Oliver Chanarin is from Great Britain. They have prepared a book which they set inside of another book, War Primer, by Bertold Brecht. Assembling material from a Google search on “war on terror”, the collection feature images of Barack Obama watching the execution of Osama bin Laden with his colleagues alongside fragments of texts by Brecht.
From the U.S., Lisa Oppenheim illustrates the effects of using keywords or slogans as a technique for searching portals like Flickr, specifically using the examples “bombing attack” or “industrial pollution.” Brendan Fowler is previously known in music circles as a drummer but will be exhibiting a series of works that combine photography with sculpture, painting and performance. He collides frames and glazed photos into one another, shattering them, or else he imposes images of friendly flowers, mirrors or other things onto the reverse of the wooden frames.
The exhibition at MoMA continues until the 6th of January 2014. New Photography has been taking place in New York since 1985.
Sources: PAP, www.moma.org; author: Lucyna Szura 20/09/2013
Translation: SMG 23/09/2013
See aslo:
Event's main web page