ftc. fiedler taubert contemporary Lindenstraße 35 D - 1096 Berlin Allemagne
Artists Dagmar Keller and Martin Wittwer continue to create a multifaceted oeuvre that includes objects, video installations, film, and photography. In their work they examine the relationship between reality and fiction. Questioning perceptual processes and an interest in social phenomena are central to their work.
ftc. is now showing a black-and-white photo series, I Knew Some of You Better Than Others, but I Miss You All, which was begun in 2007. Its starting point is contemporary visual advertising culture, and it is the first work by the two artists that displays a performative element. Here, the duo is especially interested in deconstructing aesthetic and social codes of perception.
In their photo series, I Knew Some of You Better Than Others, but I Miss You All, Keller and Wittwer confront their own bodies with images from the omnipresent photo campaigns produced by fashion and lifestyle companies, thus involving viewers in a game of changing identities.
Through their photographs, which are created in a performative situation in the studio, Keller and Wittwer appropriate these "advertising images"; they literally fall in love with them, giving them a new twist. What is seen oscillates between the artists' apparently vulnerable bodies and the immaculately presented, fetishized bodies of the photo models. This vulnerability becomes a disturbing aspect of the trompe l'oeil, revealing the perfectly staged, phallic body of advertising aesthetics.