all images:

views from the exhibition Actife Plassity at Neumeister Bar-Am, Berlin, May 2014
images © wfw
with the works Composition 001 – 012, 2014
c-print, custom oak frame, mixed-media, dimensions variable

 

KATE STECIW’s most recent body of work housed at Neumeister Bar-Am in Berlin, is a continuation of her photographic-sculptural explorations. All the works in the exhibition have been created from a single photoshop file where five stock images have been previously layered. Afterwards the layers of this base file are edited and rearranged to create multiple compositions which are then framed as unique works.

The images which stand out for their geometric shapes and their saturated colors form a series spatial relationships and thus a kind of abstract landscape. On the surface of these sculptural objects are fixed small elements like stickers or casters, creating thus a kind of augmented reality.

In a social system in which so much culturally relevant information is transmitted via images, it is in the form of images that we most often encounter the objects of our desire. The image is representational of both the desire and the desired, and if/when the object does materialize it is often represented and disseminated again as an image (documentation). No only that, but due to the objects origins in mechanical reproduction it too behaves as an image unto itself – an image both of it’s representational intention (a mold injected decorative sconce as an image of a hand hewn wooden sconce) but also it’s ideological function (a chair acts as an image of or stand-in for romantic love, casual whimsy or intellectual integrity). Images and objects function as delivery systems for commerce-driven ideologies. That said, such systems are entirely reliant on context and composition and are fatally disrupted by even minor interventions. – KATE STECIW in conversation with LUCAS BLALOCK for Layflat

➝ Actife Plassity is on view at Neumeister Bar-Am in Berlin until July 19, 2014