Vera Lutter
04 Nov - 09 Dec 2007
VERA LUTTER
Cardi gallery is pleased to present a show of irreproducible large-scale photographs by the German artist Vera Lutter, who lives and works in New York. Lutter’s works are the result of her particular idea of the camera obscura, which can not only be the size of a shipping container but, at times, actually is one. This allows her to work on a very large scale, though always as the outcome of a highly personal interpretation of traditional photographic techniques. Photography is the fixing of an image, the flow of light printed on a light-sensitive sheet, the film. Vera Lutter has made possible a temporal extension of the printed image by keeping the lens aperture open for hours, days, even weeks. The subject is registered through the light falling on the photosensitive film. The result is the negative of the image in which the play of light and shade is inverted and we sense a ghostly temporality. Monumental industrial settings, imposing skyscrapers, airport hangers, stations, humble townscapes and historical squares: all the reality that surrounds us is seen in a radiographic, scanned vision and its essence is purified through the propagation of light. The traces left are no longer instantaneous images captured by the camera but they become the frames of a physical space in a portion of time, the length of which depends on the time the aperture in the camera obscura is left open. Essentially the works of Vera Lutter are a temporal process and not the representation of an idea. Fast movement cannot be captured on the film, though cars can be recognised as trails crossing the image, trains and ships as shadows. The outcome can be compared to a movie but one where the image is inverted, from top to bottom, in a more or less sharp manner. The larger the aperture the more colour can be recognised; the smaller it is, the more black and white predominate. There is an incredible variety of sensations: it both IS and IS NOT external reality that appears before our eyes. Vera Lutter finds inspiration in a variety of historical and cultural icons and snippets of the urban and metropolitan landscape. Two faces of the same reality, and emblematic description of the context of life. Her works are a deep meditation on the space around us, an analytical eye that pierces reality as it appears to us in order to arrive at its skeleton. The subject, however monumental and imposing, reveals itself to us in a space without gravity, almost as though it had a life of its own, one unknown to reality itself and that offer us an extraordinary interpretation of itself through a photographic art that captures its essence. A surreal and fantastic passage from what transcends contingency to the immanent effect that we are anyway given when we look. This negative view of the static monumentality of Vera Lutter’s subjects, revealed through a warm and enveloping light, forces the viewer to take part in this inverse play of reality, with an almost metaphysical interpretation of the concept of abstraction and, at the same time, a tangible one of the hidden truth of the space that surrounds us. Instability, uncertainty, suspense, and monumentality are entities that I consider and think about; they generate work. Vera Lutter. Nicolò Cardi says: "I'm very proud to announce Vera Lutter first solo show in Italy;she's considered as an excellent creative personality for the entire world of contemporary art. As I sincerly admire her, it has been a really pleasure for me to organize and present in Milan her new deeply comunicative works"
© Galleria Cardi
Cardi gallery is pleased to present a show of irreproducible large-scale photographs by the German artist Vera Lutter, who lives and works in New York. Lutter’s works are the result of her particular idea of the camera obscura, which can not only be the size of a shipping container but, at times, actually is one. This allows her to work on a very large scale, though always as the outcome of a highly personal interpretation of traditional photographic techniques. Photography is the fixing of an image, the flow of light printed on a light-sensitive sheet, the film. Vera Lutter has made possible a temporal extension of the printed image by keeping the lens aperture open for hours, days, even weeks. The subject is registered through the light falling on the photosensitive film. The result is the negative of the image in which the play of light and shade is inverted and we sense a ghostly temporality. Monumental industrial settings, imposing skyscrapers, airport hangers, stations, humble townscapes and historical squares: all the reality that surrounds us is seen in a radiographic, scanned vision and its essence is purified through the propagation of light. The traces left are no longer instantaneous images captured by the camera but they become the frames of a physical space in a portion of time, the length of which depends on the time the aperture in the camera obscura is left open. Essentially the works of Vera Lutter are a temporal process and not the representation of an idea. Fast movement cannot be captured on the film, though cars can be recognised as trails crossing the image, trains and ships as shadows. The outcome can be compared to a movie but one where the image is inverted, from top to bottom, in a more or less sharp manner. The larger the aperture the more colour can be recognised; the smaller it is, the more black and white predominate. There is an incredible variety of sensations: it both IS and IS NOT external reality that appears before our eyes. Vera Lutter finds inspiration in a variety of historical and cultural icons and snippets of the urban and metropolitan landscape. Two faces of the same reality, and emblematic description of the context of life. Her works are a deep meditation on the space around us, an analytical eye that pierces reality as it appears to us in order to arrive at its skeleton. The subject, however monumental and imposing, reveals itself to us in a space without gravity, almost as though it had a life of its own, one unknown to reality itself and that offer us an extraordinary interpretation of itself through a photographic art that captures its essence. A surreal and fantastic passage from what transcends contingency to the immanent effect that we are anyway given when we look. This negative view of the static monumentality of Vera Lutter’s subjects, revealed through a warm and enveloping light, forces the viewer to take part in this inverse play of reality, with an almost metaphysical interpretation of the concept of abstraction and, at the same time, a tangible one of the hidden truth of the space that surrounds us. Instability, uncertainty, suspense, and monumentality are entities that I consider and think about; they generate work. Vera Lutter. Nicolò Cardi says: "I'm very proud to announce Vera Lutter first solo show in Italy;she's considered as an excellent creative personality for the entire world of contemporary art. As I sincerly admire her, it has been a really pleasure for me to organize and present in Milan her new deeply comunicative works"
© Galleria Cardi