SELFPRESENTATION BY SUSANNE KR...
Selfpresentation by Susanne KriemannThe representation of historical events has been the central subject of my artistic production for some years. The subject has led me to make work with photography and text; my interests are conceptual. The points of reference include the tension between historical objects and collective identities, and the re-contextualization of these objects within the space of the museum. The understanding of 20th-century history is put together by collections of documents, which are accessed by first-hand or second-hand readings. I am interested in how photographs narrate and eventually evoke imagination and mystery about the past. The placement of an existing image and its different sources into a new time and space often brings forth emotional, absurd, and humorous notions. The process of montage plays a key role in my engagement with the subject of representation, because facts and fictions can be situated with each other in a non-linear way. With the juxtaposition of the different sources, styles, and meanings, I hope to change perspectives on already established images.
About the photographs of Susanne Kriemann by Dr. Vanessa Joan Mueller
Susanne Kriemann’s photographs direct their attention towards apparently incidental scenes, which are either charged with meaning or are suggestive of such. They depict a zone of insecurity, in which objects or architectural details appear to speak of contexts that remain external to photography and that cannot be divined from the title. On the contrary, the title assimilates itself into the composition as well, like a further suggestive level of commentary.
Her photographs often appear as though collaged—different levels of reality seem to be layered one after another. And yet there has been no manipulation on Kriemann’s part. A number of motifs look as though they were taken in the 60s or 70s. Reality penetrates these images from the periphery inwards in the form of incidental details, which refer to the present day. This shifting or dislocation is also of interest to Susanne Kriemann, not only from the perspective of depicting the historical element in monuments, but also those ephemeral moments of our historically-amnesic present day.