Korina Kaisershot " Körperbilder"
Opening: February 2nd at 7.30 p.m.
Exhibition: extended until March 11th 2017.
The exhibition “Körperbilder”, ‘body images’, presented as an installation, displays a series of ten photograms resulting from a study on body, movement and light by the German dancer, artist and photographer Korina Kaisershot.
Camera-less photography – uniqueness
The works on display are made using a camera-less technique which allows the artist to create a photographic image without the use of a camera. The photograms are images of an object in contact with a light-sensitive surface exposed to a strong, direct light. The object, in this case the artist’s body in motion, blocks the light and is revealed as a white shape on black. The peculiarity of this technique (extensively used by pioneers and masters of photography such as William Henry Fox Talbot, Man Ray, Christian Schad and Floris Neussus, among others) encodes the uniqueness of the pieces, given the absence of physical or digital negatives and the irreproducibility of time, space, exact gesture and light of the moment in which the image has been generated.
The uniqueness inherent to this technique — and to the randomness arising from it — is subsequently enhanced by the artist through the use of acids for the photographic development as a personal chemical stamp on the processed photograms.
Movement - existence
This technique allows Kaisershot to analyse body expressiveness in form of images, showing her interest in the body and movement. Body awareness and corporal communication are vital expressive elements for the artist, since, for her, the very consciousness of living is based on a permanent bodily experience, a constant movement in permanent evolution. Just as in contemporary dance there are no figures on the scene except those elaborated by the body, in these images the only visual expression is generated by the shapes of the body and its movements.
Ambiguity - imagination
The artist began to explore this technique while collaborating in the experimental project Die Frau von Nebenan (Munich, 2010), based on the film La femme d'à côté by François Truffaut, which dealt with the ideal and fictitious image of the unknown (video on display during the exhibition). From that moment on, the artist continued exploring the theme of an ideal projection of the unknown, and found in the camera-less technique the key to her personal experimentation on inward and outward gazes, the visible and the invisible and the concept of ambiguity. This technique is based on a strong spontaneity that generates surprising results for both the viewer and the artist, since the final result cannot be controlled or predicted at the moment of its creation. The image is processed and discovered, although maintaining its real size, it is transfigured by movement and by light and corresponds not to the original object but it transforms into an ambiguous, anthropomorphic and unknown image. The exhibited works represent the result of a technical and conceptual experiment on the fictitious image, the ambiguity of forms, the presence and the absence, desire, voyeurism, humour and paranoia derived from imagery. We invite you to take part to the artistic process and research that takes place in the mysterious and dark space of the photographic laboratory, today reproduced at the gallery.
Korina Kaisershot (San Antonio, Texas, USA, 1973) is a German artist, photographer and dancer who lives and works in Barcelona since 2010. From 1992 to 2010 she was part of the Munich Opera Ballet (Bayerische Staatsoper). Trained in interior design at Rosenheim University High School and successively at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, where she finished her studies in 2009. During the Academy years she was part of the contemporary dance performance group guided by choreographer Dali Touiti.
Throughout her career she took part in several exhibitions in Germany and in experimental projects related to photography and movement. Her work is part of different collections in Germany.
Between 2012 and 2013 Kaisershot participated in the training program in contemporary dance “Inside Movement” taught by Olga Tragant.
In addition to her artistic activity, she teaches drawing and photography and works as an illustrator for different German publishers. Since 2015 she is responsible for the photography laboratory at the Circle Artístic de Sant Lluc in Barcelona. This exhibition displays for the first time her works in Barcelona.
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