Sailer / Steinbacher / Ziegler

With the work “Ladiz Alps”, Gregor Sailer addresses an explosive topic from the alpine high mountains of his home country. High mountain architecture, or rather architectural elements, appear completely alien and devoid of meaning at second glance. Sailer has deliberately avoided well-known, symbolic architecture in order to keep motifs interchangeable and unclassifiable. They are facilities like those found everywhere in the Alps with the purpose of handling and transporting masses of people. These masses are accommodated in abnormally mutated mountain villages. Massive interventions reminiscent of an artificially created world, such as the huge fleece covers of the glaciers, show the enormous effort that is made to maintain high mountain tourism and the Alpine myth that drives it.

In contrast to Sailer’s critical gaze, the painter Michael Ziegler, who has been keeping photographic diary records for many years, is showing a selection of 40 small-format works that are characterised by precise observations and have his own atmospheric world microcosm as their theme. Peter Weiermair compares Ziegler to a flâneur, who is characterised by a constantly receptive sensibility and sensitivity for details. However, the artist “also sees with the eyes of the visual artist who knows the pictorial treasure of ancient painting. …He is interested as an uninvolved observer in the same way in workers covering a roof as in a fire at night…. … Ziegler is an intimist. This applies not only to the content of his pictures but also to their form, which rarely exceeds postcard size.” (Peter Weiermair)

David Steinbacher’s series “Meerbergewolken”, which he has consistently pursued since 2006, deals with the line of the horizon as a photographic challenge. The 40×40 cm b/w photographs of the precisely centred horizon line lead the viewer to a place of longing that everyone sees and seeks and yet never reaches. Steinbacher directs our gaze to a point in the far distance, sharpening our eye for this view (detail) while leaving the actual dimensions unclear. Proximity and distance are no longer ascertainable in their extension, they are reversed. Although the eye of the camera leads us to the outermost point of boundlessness, the chosen central perspective severely limits our perception. This moment is already a thing of the past when we capture it with the camera.