12.09.2003 - 25.10.2003, Karlsruhe

Isabell Heimerdinger

Wolves Pigs People

 

We are pleased to present Isabell Heimerdinger with her third solo exhibition in our gallery. Her work is about the search for the difference between semblance and veritability within the different facets of the wide fields of film and drama. In her work she questions authenticity and acting, while decoding different identity levels.

The main piece of the exhibition is “Two films”. In two 16mm-Films, each one 5 minutes long, which are projected one after another as a loop, the actress Bibiana Beglau carries out apparently the same action: she drinks a cup coffee and smokes a cigarette. Only exact observation reveals that in one film the cup is full, in the other empty.
“Two films” is a subsequent work to “Waiting, Acting Waiting”, in which the artist asks the actor Wolfram Berger to play a waiting man. First she films him secretly while he is waiting for the film shoot to begin. In contrast to this film, Bibiana Beglau is conscious of the fact that she is being filmed.
The photo series “Before and after” shows actors from the Burgtheater in Vienna in two extreme situations, directly before and after peformance. Before the performance the actors seem to be tense, afterwards relaxed. Whether this attitude is authentic or feigned (consciously or unconsciously), is open to speculation. For the Polaroid series “From Annika to Jochen” the artist asked friends to copy accurately the pose of the previous picture, as they were photographed. Thus a series of portraits developed , which differ increasingly from the first Polaroid to the last.

The pretence of reality is also the theme of the work “Eclipse”, a lamp which seems to shine. Upon closer inspection it becomes apparent that there is an external spotlight shining on it, a requisite inherent to film and theater.
In all works the ambivalence between semblance and veritability, reality and fake remains.