2018
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FELIX RINGEL GALERIE
Duesseldorf
Michael Reisch – Isabella Til, Present Progressive
16 February – 21 April 2018
In context of DÜSSELDORF PHOTO, 16-25 February 2018
– When at the beginning of the 20th century Kandinsky and the movement Blauer Reiter proclaimed the rejection from naturalism and Duchamp, Dada and Malewitsch stated the end of painting, the freedom of artistic means began. Still photography, although already explored to its abstract and cameraless edges by Moholy Nagy or Man Ray during the 1920s, is mostly associated with the expectation of depicting reality. –
Present Progressive describes the process of doing while being aware of the past and simultaneously reaching for the future. One can call it extended photography that strives for progress by means of experiments. An idea is developed rather than just reproduced by expressly including digital tools and technologies into the process. Its potential is explored, played upside down and the other way round like a piece of jazz music. It's more of a mindset than a specific style.
The exhibition shows a confrontation of two positions. Michael Reisch develops his radical invers photography starting the photographic work from algorithms rather than reality and then transforming the so found image into sculpture and architecture.
Isabella Til digitalizes photo- and watercolor-templates from her own archive and transforms them into a new rather reduced imagined scenery by integrating in particular the coincidences that arise from the use of digital tools and the computer program such as copy-paste, accepting glitches and reversing steps. The work examines three-dimensionality and light in the image by using a minimal canon of form and colour. Her templates cover a period of about thirty years and the resulting digital collages intentionally point to constructivism or early experimental photography as they are initially inspired by her own 30 years old analogue collages she made back then of her photograms. The exploration of the possibilities of abstract representation of light and space becomes an issue. The overpainting of the final print offers further possibilities to either intensify or disturb the compositional structure by creating another sensual and spatial level. The multiple layers create spatial correlations – subtle and transparent or strict and graphic. The work also responds to photography and painting under digital conditions.
