ANITA TARNUTZER | LA DEUXIÈME NUIT | PRESS RELEASE
Anita Tarnutzer | La Deuxième Nuit | Press ReleaseApril 19th - May 9th 2008
Galerie Metro is very pleased to present “La Deuxième Nuit”, the first solo-exhibition of Anita Tarnutzer.
In Anita Tarnutzer’s photo- and video-installations, natural phenomena like landscapes, clouds and mountains become metaphors for a circular, self-contained system of nature. The works of this exhibition refer to a mysticism of nature in which the signs in the book of nature got lost in the absence of god. Without the reference to god these signs fall back on themselves and remain cryptically and dark. In this context the title (in English “The second Night”) is stands for an art which can’t do anything but echo the world in its mysteriousness and darkness.
The photo-installation „Stream“establishes a threshold between the exhibition and the world outside. All around the walls, the ceiling and the floor pictures of landscapes with mountains and clouds are joint together in a double line. Through their asymmetrical succession the single photographs compose the picture of a stream, which runs at times dramatically at times quietly through its channel and always refluxes to itself. With the step-through of this circle, the beholder immerses into a continuum as self-contained as this stream.
The video-work „Clearance“ is a circular projection that shows a recording in which the camera turns around itself at the edge of a forest. The acceleration of the circular movement through the green tree tops pointing at the light and the blue of the sky ends in a sudden explosion of light. The absolutization of the “Clearance” as a free space opposite the impenetrable darkness, in front of which it becomes visible in the first place, leads to the dissolution of freedom without its opponent.
In the video „The second Night“ a thundercloud, stands threatening above a valley. The thunderbolts, illuminating it from within, threaten the city, visible through a few little light points, underneath it. Contrasting the process of “Clearance” this work shows a state on the outermost edge of an extreme, without ever reaching it. This work is not about nature as a mystical unity, with the human being as a natural creature being part of it. It is about nature as the unknown, permanently threatening to overpower: the terror in the face of this enduring tension, leads to the desire of a break out and total dissolution.
„The Arches“ are a series of sculptural photographs. The humidity of the printing ink contracted the photo paper to the title-giving arches. They materialize a misperception with metaphysical consequences: Extended ad infinitum all lines run back to oneself. The firmament turns out to be an optical illusion. The medieval hereafter outside the cope of heaven lies outside the
own boundaries of perception and understanding.
The swiss artist Anita Tarnutzer was born in St. Gallen. After her apprenticeship as an art moulder she studied visual arts at the University of Arts in Berlin. Lately she participated in exhibitions at Glue Berlin and the Haus am Kleistpark. Her video-works were shown within screenings in Kassel, 22. Dokumentarfilm- und Video Festival (2005), in Milano, Galerie Unorossodue (2005) and at the Kunstfilmbiennale in Cologne (2004). On May 8th, 2008 she will exhibit in “Show Down” together with Andrea Siering at the “Exex” in St. Gallen.