vis motrix
February 26 – March 18, 2007
“Vis Motrix” - exhibition of dye transfer prints by Egbert Haneke
Egbert Haneke’s pictures were part of our very first exhibition in 2004. He showed a slide dissolve projection; and since then he has regularly developed, while continuing to work in contrasting media and focussing on nature within urban surroundings defined by architecture. For six years now, Haneke has been studying the inherent possibilities of dye transfer prints, and has come up with a technique that exactly matches his imagery.
This printing process was developed in the 1930s by Kodak, and is appropriated by Haneke who uses it to arrive at a special photographical technique that makes the medium completely his own. He starts out with analogue 35mm slides, which are then drum scanned and digitally treated, finally the images are translated into dye transfer prints, a unique process invented by Haneke.
The photographs from Egbet Haneke’s series “Vis Motrix” focus on simple things, self-evident or even trivial motifs from our everyday surroundings. But these are thrown into sharp relief in precisely composed frames that leave nothing to accident, all shapes and colours are closely defined.
Reflections in window panes or water surfaces create playful layers on the picture plane; fences and bars block the gaze and lock in vestiges of vegetation; an empty expanse seems to crowd into a small rock, the only protagonist of an image, to push it out of the composition. Still, a pioneer little weed finds its way through a crack in the concrete. Haneke has three categories to label his pictorial archive: nature, culture and waste – but there is no fight between the three. Every motive stands for itself, determined only by itself, there is no attempt to place it in time, within a context, or as part of a story.
The dye transfer prints have heightened colours, a strange depth effect, and an unusually high definition. Photographs often are just references to the things they describe, but here the spectacular lighting and colours give these photographs a pictorial sheen that lends them the aura of original artworks.
Supported by Medienteam der Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart