Krottendorfer / Witzmann / Schaller

Markus Krottendorfer, Andrea Witzmann and Lukas Schaller belong to the younger generation of Austrian artists whose work with photography is based on documentary image strategies. In their respective monographic presentations, they show works from the genres portrait and space/architecture.

Markus Krottendorfer deals with the theme of the “new home”. These are, in addition to the megacities demolished for the dam on the Jangteskiang, concrete, planned terraced housing estates, villas with front gardens as well as agglomerations created on the drawing board, in which the “New Home” is supposed to resemble a dream realised. He turns his gaze outwards to the architecture of the built symbols of social and societal change, which are supposed to represent security, togetherness and identity for the individual.

Andrea Witzmann’s work gains its appeal from the “uncertainty in which the viewer is left: The uncertainty as to whether we are dealing here with staged spaces or with a skilful staging technician who … with a pronounced will to compose records her surroundings and is thus able to stage them. The uncertainty as to whether the atmospheric tension, which only slowly builds up as we look, is merely a fiction of the viewer or a deliberate strategy. The uncertainty, in other words, as to whether we are “seeing correctly” or whether we are succumbing to charming attempts at deception and/or seduction.” (Maren Lübke in: Camera Austria)

In his works, Lukas Schaller addresses the relationship between interior and exterior spaces and their sociographic topologies. Uses of space are subject to constant change, are alienated and reappear transformed elsewhere. Exterior worlds and interior worlds shift both in reality and through photographic interventions. These are not stagings, but immanent to the photographic medium.