Eliska Bartek
dal 11/2/2010 al 9/4/2010
Segnalato da
11/2/2010
Eliska Bartek
Photo Edition Berlin, Berlin
Erratic Photography - Flowers and new works. The artist experiments with different media such as painting, photography and video in depth. Created on a journey to Abu Dhabi, her recent series of works reveals both a hightened sensitivity for the void; by working with time exposure and camera in motion, Bartek succeeds to capture the fluid image of a megacity at the moments of departure and arrival on its airport.
Eliska Bartek is probably one of the most diverse contemporary artists. Not only does she experiment with different media such as painting, photography and video, she explores each medium in depth. In her first solo exhibition at Photo Edition Berlin new photographic works will be on show.
"Flowers" are prominent in the works of Irving Penn, Robert Mapplethorpe, Nobuyoshi Araki, Peter Fischli/David Weiss, or Thomas Florschuetz and often stand for the limits of visible perception, notions of beauty and the ephemeral. Eliska Bartek continues and expands this tradition, producing breathtaking images with her own signature of light, form and colour.
The artist has come to be increasingly interested in the subconscious and the mystic, the sense that there is another reality behind pictures, that remains unshown. It is this unshown reality that Eliska Bartek focuses on in her recent work, as in this 2008 series of black and white photographs. Created on a journey to Abu Dhabi, the series reveals both a hightened sensitivity for the void and a profound curiosity for orientation in an unknown culture. By working with time exposure and camera in motion, the artist succeeds to capture the fluid image of a megacity at the moments of departure and arrival on its airport. She presents us with a sense of tension which builds up in transitional moments of arrival and departure, and which seems to correlate with the discrepancy between image and non-image, longing and disappointment, familiarity and estrangement, expectation and passiveness.
The exhibition also includes Photo- and Chemigrams from new series.
Her previous solo exhibitions in Warsaw, Paris and St. Petersburg were mainly dedicated to photography. "Painting with light", whether in photography or actual painting has been the driving force behind her work for the past 20 years.
Eliska Bartek followed Hodlers traces in 2009, and went on a painterly journey through the Swiss Alps around Bern. Unlike Hodler she does not show the sensuous grandeur of an undeniably majestic nature in rhythmic harmony of heaven and earth. The severe reduction to black and white, together with a distinct scraping technique make reference to the tradition of expressionist woodcut, for instance the work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The mountain landscape appears in mystical flare from a black depth, and seems at the same time energetic and raw.
Bartek confronts Hodlers rhytmical mountainscape with a nervous pulsative and vibrating nature. No majestically looming crests but rather an uncanny apparition emerging from complete darkness. The artist responds to Hodlers timeless beauty and quietness with a heightened momentary presence. Instead of spheric symbolism ecstatic unleashing.
Bartek is aware of the tragic biographical weight that clings to the painting of the "Stockhornkette with Thunersee", which had been forced from the owners who died in Auschwitz, and is still subject of a legal battle concerning art theft from the National Socialists. To a certain extent Hodlers peaceful world reappears in Barteks paintings as one that has witnessed the atrocities and deep human suffering of the Second World War. It can no longer be contemplated with "innocent" eyes.
Barteks way of dealing with Hodlers landscapes indirectly denotes this dreadful context. The once cosmic idyll of Thunersee is charged with the disturbing experience of death. The covering of the alps through mass media and the Tourist industry has led to a disenchantment of the once mighty and threatening mountains. In Barteks images the seeming grasp and domination of nature dissolves and the latter appears again strange and uncanny: an existential, material-spiritual field of forces.
(Matthias Haldemann, Kunsthaus Zug)
Parallel to her exhibition at the Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin from 11 March - 20 April 2010 with painting and video Eliska Bartek presents her photography works from this series at Photo Edition Berlin.
Image: © Eliska Bartek from the series 'Erratic Photography - Paris' 2008
Opening: Friday, 12 February from 7pm
Book signing with the artist
Introduction by: Gunther Dietrich, Gallery owner and publisher Photo Edition Berlin - Dr. Bernd Fechner, photomarketing.de and board member of Section Art, Market and Law of the German Society of Photography (DGPh)
Photo Edition Berlin gallery for contemporary photography
Ystaderstr. 14a, D - 10437 Berlin
Opening hours: Wed-Sat 2- 6 pm and by appointment