27 Nov 2014

Claudiu Cobilanschi, Katharina Gruzei at IG Bildende Kunst, Vienna

In co-operation with AIR–ARTIST IN RESIDENCE,
curated by Alexandra Hennig and Sonja Schoen.

The characteristics ascribed to youth are manifold and ambivalent. They range from grace and charm, intellectual awakening and boundless energy, to an image with the opposite polarity: defiant youth typified by the rejection of all that alleged potential by being uninterested and rebellious. In the context of youth the extent to which perspective influences how one sees something or someone takes on a bittersweet quality. With a change in illumination the familiar becomes foreign, the mysterious is demystified. And so it is that in the light of the moon a common garden grill comes to remind one of a prop from a horror film and, because of its professional lighting, a photograph of a youth holding in front of himself a stuffed bird of prey taken from the store room of a small town museum suggests it came from a fashion magazine. The two scenes seem diametrically opposed but actually represent the two picture cycles being presented in the exhibition which hold the balance between two different standpoints from which the subject of youth under changing illumination is examined.

Fullmoon, a 20-part photo series by artist Katharina Gruzei - of which a selection will be shown - uses the brightness of the full moon to capture images of what might be considered superficially desolate suburban non-places which young people take over and make use of during the day. In the diffuse moonlight people and objects become enigmatically charged. On the one hand this lends them an auratic presence and, at the same time, allows them to oscillate between reality and the phantasmic. However uncanny the first impressions evoked by Gruzei's moonlight scenes might be, the magic potential of the night intersects with that of youth, both of which, as partially explored territories, contain liberating and enlightening moments.

The exhibition brings Claudiu Cobilanschi's nine-part series, Muzeul de Stiinte Naturale, into a dialogue with Gruzei's 'nocturne'. But here, too, it cannot be denied that his highly aesthetic, brightly lit portraits of attractive young people posed with noble birds contain an inherent 'delightful horror'. As soon as the perfect surface - a pale reflection of youth, beauty and freedom - is questioned, Pandora's box opens successively: with the recognition of the animals as dead bodies whose relationship to the youth protagonists remains cold and cryptic, unease and alienation slips into the mind while at the same time the borders between human and animal become increasingly porous.

The photographic series from Katharina Gruzei and Claudiu Cobilanschi may appear to be as different as day and night but they are bound together by a strategic doubt that not only questions the veracity of the image but also the belief in essence. Ambiguity and crisis are not only stamped on both works but also characterise the process of growing up as a time of transition and change.