Katja Loher | Where was Green Born?
10 - 31 Mar 2011
Katja Loher projects her videos onto the surface of large smooth orbs suspended in the gallery space. The thirty-one year-old Swiss artist has detached herself from the monitor and the black box whereby videos are projected onto one or several walls, opting instead to stage her works as spatial Video Sculptures, which she calls Videoplanets and Miniverses. They are created in the artist's New York studio, in close co-operation with dancers, choreographers, musicians and designers. The Miniverses are small orbs with apertures that enable the viewer to look in on a plethora of worlds. Like the Videoplanets, their larger counterparts, they reflect the human condition in a globalized world.
Loher's sculptural video works conjure up a field of tension between fairytale fantasy and oppressive reality. Her surreal worlds are populated by realistic figures that tumble about virtual spaces and appear to be intent on preventing ecological collapse. Androgynous dancers evoke fairies and – in performing the artificial pollination of plants or even photosynthesis – strive to conserve the natural basis of human existence.
Unlike the textual level Loher introduces in some of her videos, the choreographies rarely betray a narrative structure. The dancers' movements tend to be synchronic and the bodies seen from the bird's-eye view that Loher adopts in virtually all her works form clear patterns, which she then proceeds to multiply kaleidoscopically in the course of digital post-production. The symmetrical multiplication of moving bodies in constantly changing constellations produces a rhythmically pulsating collective. Loher's dream-like mise-en-scene of apocalyptic tales suggests that "Saving the Planet" can only be achieved by a joint effort.
(extracts from text by Ruth Littman | Translation from German: Margret Powell-Joss)
Born in Zurich 1979. ESBA Fine Art Academy Geneva (2001), and FHBB HGK Fine Art Academy Basel (2004). Past exhibitions includes: MuBE, Museu Brasileiro da Escultura, Sao Paulo (2011), NETinSPACE MAXXI, National Museum of the Arts of the XXIst Century, Rome (2010), Galapagos Art Space, Dumbo, New York (2009). Lives and works in New york.
Loher's sculptural video works conjure up a field of tension between fairytale fantasy and oppressive reality. Her surreal worlds are populated by realistic figures that tumble about virtual spaces and appear to be intent on preventing ecological collapse. Androgynous dancers evoke fairies and – in performing the artificial pollination of plants or even photosynthesis – strive to conserve the natural basis of human existence.
Unlike the textual level Loher introduces in some of her videos, the choreographies rarely betray a narrative structure. The dancers' movements tend to be synchronic and the bodies seen from the bird's-eye view that Loher adopts in virtually all her works form clear patterns, which she then proceeds to multiply kaleidoscopically in the course of digital post-production. The symmetrical multiplication of moving bodies in constantly changing constellations produces a rhythmically pulsating collective. Loher's dream-like mise-en-scene of apocalyptic tales suggests that "Saving the Planet" can only be achieved by a joint effort.
(extracts from text by Ruth Littman | Translation from German: Margret Powell-Joss)
Born in Zurich 1979. ESBA Fine Art Academy Geneva (2001), and FHBB HGK Fine Art Academy Basel (2004). Past exhibitions includes: MuBE, Museu Brasileiro da Escultura, Sao Paulo (2011), NETinSPACE MAXXI, National Museum of the Arts of the XXIst Century, Rome (2010), Galapagos Art Space, Dumbo, New York (2009). Lives and works in New york.