Artist: Kyra Tabea Balderer
Exhibition title: Szenario
Curated by: Eveline Suter
Venue: Kunstmuseum Luzern, Luzern, Switzerland
Date: October 13, 2018 – January 6, 2019
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Kunstmuseum Luzern
For “Szenario” Kyra Tabea Balderer has made a new series of works as well as a 16mm film on the theme of the opposition between movement and standstill. The artist often uses media in an unusual way, with the result that her photographs are extremely painterly and haptic, while the movement-oriented medium of film, by contrast, manages with only a minimum of action. While the camera rotates closely around a woman, the latter looks keenly at the work, moving her hands and her mouth. How long does it take us to realize that this woman could represent a bird? The uncertainty about what we are seeing is also part of Balderer’s photographic works. When looking at her works we repeatedly ask ourselves: What is it about? What kind of world is this? How large are the objects depicted?
Currently Balderer is preoccupied in her art with the cultural aspects of perception. She keeps a look-out for archaic types and examines how many forms or movements are necessary to recog-nize an object or a creature. For this purpose, the artist works analogously on film with a large-format camera. This sedate medium presupposes patience, precise planning and experience.
Kyra Tabea Balderer selects the depth of field and focus with great precision. Often only one point in the image is totally sharp; a brushstroke shining out of the darkness, the cutting edge of a foil or a surface structure. In the rest of the image the edges of the form dissolve more or less in a blur. What is more, she achieves depth by the use of mirrors and above all by exact lighting, which means that the shadows are important actors in the image.
Only self-constructed objects made of cardboard, wood, mirrors or other simple materials which she paints more or less colourfully appear in front of Balderer’s lens. These structures partly remind us of known things, for example, items of furniture, leaves or artefacts, sometimes only abstract forms can be recognised, hovering between the organic and the constructive. The artist reveals the constructed aspect, the stabilising rods on the cardboard palm leaves, or a piece of fastening twine becomes even part of the composition.
Kyra Tabea Balderer gets her inspiration in the city, photographing an all-over made of leaves, a grid or a chance graphic pattern. Art books also serve her as a store of pictures, and she has a special interest in photographs of sculptures and artefacts. The artist cleverly combines sculp-ture, painting and photography, in the individual image as well as in the installation presenta-tion. She uses strong colours for the backgrounds of her works and also hangs the paintings in a playful manner. In the exhibition, two pavilion-like structures point to the title “Szenario” and to the shape of the English garden. The exhibition room is thus transformed, as it were, into one of her paintings, in which the visitors can become immersed.
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Szenario, 2018, exhibition view, Kunstmuseum Luzern, photo: Marc Latzel
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Szenario, 2018, exhibition view, Kunstmuseum Luzern, photo: Marc Latzel
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Szenario, 2018, exhibition view, Kunstmuseum Luzern, photo: Marc Latzel
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Szenario, 2018, exhibition view, Kunstmuseum Luzern, photo: Marc Latzel
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Sacra Conversazione, 2018, Triptychon, C-Print (Handabzug), je 65 x 50 cm, Courtesy of the artist
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Sacra Conversazione, 2018, Triptychon, C-Print (Handabzug), je 65 x 50 cm, Courtesy of the artist
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Sacra Conversazione, 2018, Triptychon, C-Print (Handabzug), je 65 x 50 cm, Courtesy of the artist
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Ohne Titel, 2018, Pigment print, 130 x 166 cm, Courtesy of the artist
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Palme, 2017, Pigment print, 140 x 179 cm, Courtesy of the artist
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Ohne Titel, 2018, C-Print (Handabzug), 75 x 60 cm, Courtesy of the artist
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Das Paar, 2018, Pigment print, 130 x 166 cm, Courtesy of the artist
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Bird Piece, 2018, 16-mm-Film, 10’, Film still, Courtesy of the artist
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Bird Piece, 2018, 16-mm-Film, 10’, Film still, Courtesy of the artist
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Templates, 2018, Pigment print, 80 x 100 cm, Courtesy of the artist
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Ohne Titel, 2018, C-Print (Handabzug), 100 x 80cm, Courtesy of the artist
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Falling Monument, 2017, C-Print (Handabzug), 60 x 50cm, Courtesy of the artist
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Ohne Titel, 2017, Pigment print, 128 x 100 cm, Courtesy of the artist
Kyra Tabea Balderer, Ohne Titel, 2018, C-Print (Handabzug), 130 x 100 cm, Courtesy of the artist