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(extract from the catalogue to the exhibition "OHNE ENDE") Text: Deborah Bürgel Translation: Bernhard Grosse-Frintrop The
mirror represents an exemplary blank space, because the latter
proclaims itself to this effect and refuses the conventional
expectation of the intended beholder by putting him into the picture, thus converting the relation: “The beholder is in the picture”, as was written by Wolfgang Kemp (Kemp, 1985). By the mirror being held before him, the blank space confronts the beholder with himself, inciting him to query the conditions and possibilities of his own being. Here, a way to reception is proposed by the “beholder figure“ named by the art theorist, artist and architect of the Italian Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti (Alberti, De Pictura, 1435), an instruction to the beholder’s person, making an identification offer. The painting of Romanticism often uses repoussoir figures as a reception offer that mark the beholder’s position in the picture as epresentatives, thus helping him to gain an understanding. Freya Hattenberger most often takes this role by herself in her video performances and photographs by staging her own body in the pictures. It usually forms the starting point of her reflection upon her role as a woman and artist, where she questions the gender constructs and specific role models based on them, making reference to the representation of the female body also in the context of artistic work. In innumerable variations, eternal myths of the female describe the woman as an object of desire, a source of inspiration and as a vase or receptacle. This imagery provides both, the foil with a long tradition and the dynamite for the video performance "ICH BIN`S" (2004), which shows Freya Hattenberger drinking from a Coca-Cola bottle, burping and saying “ich bin’s“ ("it´s me") after every draught. In this deconstruction, traded pictures of womanliness are quoted and at the same time faced with feminist issues and reduced to absurdity by being connected to the adolescent, almost banal attempt of self-ascertainment. It is in a comparable manner that Freya Hattenberger deals with traded myths of artistic work depicting the woman in a one-sided role time and again. For instance, her video performance "SIRENE" (2006), also due to its erotic allusions, makes reference to the subject of gender-specific role models, giving a new feminine reading to the artist’s myth dominated by a masculine notion. A complex and enigmatic picture for the artistic work, which has unequivocally a sexual connotation, is the bachelor machine in Marcel Duchamps’ “Big Glass” La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (The bride bared by her bachelors, even) from the years 1915–1923, which is derided in Freya Hattenberger’s ‘interactive sound installation’ "VIER BRÄUTE" (2005) through four hot air driers employed as functional ready-mades. Much more popular and stereotyped is the assignment of the female model’s role – the woman being the object of the picture and the object of desire in one – which is also the theme of the photographs by Freya Hattenberger wearing the title "I LOVE JÜRGEN TELLER" (2006). In most cases, the physical presence of the artist in Freya Hattenberger’s works is imparted via (technically generated) pictures, which definitely show off their pictorial nature, e.g. in the video picture ich bin’ s showing the reflection of the protagonist, that means her being she ascertains herself of; here she rather represents herself as a mirrored picture of her being, so that her self-ascertainment nearly turns into a comment of romantic irony as a result of the multiple medial representation. Medialization is always a form of objectification that leads to a fragmentation of the body, the way it manifests itself in Freya Hattenberger’s video installation "NOT A VENUS" (2005), where a female body is downright taken to pieces by two monitors showing the woman’s feet and head from a close sight each. Yet, Freya Hattenberger does not approach the question for femininity solely in connection with artistic work, she does not stay with gender-specific questions and feminist points of criticism but suggests transferability to existential issues and universally valid dimensions. So the short film "9uhr39" (2001/2005) proceeds from the personal to the general, allowing to anticipate an extension to a political, historic horizon. However, the central theme always remains the picture of the body, its staging, which is inseparably linked up with the faith in the picture, as it is essential for the icon. By picturing the body, its needs ("P.E.T.", 2005, video performance) as well as its possibilities and bounds, she acts in the tradition of performance art, which works to an extraordinary degree with the presence of the body and is conceptually aimed at being transferred to the examination of general human conditions. |
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