The publication “Non-Representational Photography” brings together several series of photograms produced by conceptual artist Lilo Nein in 2017.
The black-and-white, small-format works are direct images of the process and apparatus in the darkroom, in which the artist has dispensed with the use of objects – apart from utensils from the photo lab. The series of works divide the resulting images into groups with representational, concrete and abstract motifs – according to their titles, they can be read as formal compositions or poetic representations of natural phenomena or sensations. The performative play with the linguistic quality of image and text, which recurs throughout Lilo Nein’s artistic work, emerges through the associatively assigned titles and opens up the space in which interpretation and fantasy unfold. With her materialsensitive photogrammatic practice, Lilo Nein also puts a means of analysis and reflection on visual representation at disposal. She draws attention to the gap in the arbitrary relationship between apparatus and meaning and questions the ontological conditions of the (photographic) image in a time of highly accelerated digital reproduction and distribution. (Synne Genzmer, Curator)

Lilo Nein, *1980 in Vienna. Lives and works in Vienna.