Claudia Fritz - Image and reality

Photography allows apparently precise rendering of reality. A specific section of the real world emerges as its documented equivalent being accurate in every detail. However, a picture is never identical with reality.  We move through time and space. Photography captures a single irretrievable moment. Therefore, it represents a document of a point in time; however, the image section defined by the photographer only shows a fragment of what we actually see.
The artistic concept designed by Claudia Fritz is based on these considerations. In the series of works especially created for the Kunstraum Pettneu the artist deals with the relation of image and reality. A digital photography, for instance, depicts a section of the wall to which the piece of art has actually been attached. You see incident light and shadow. The central theme of this particular work is the apparent tautology, in other words the congruence between the real wall and the photograph. The same can be observed with regard to a window revealing the view of an advertising poster positioned on the opposite.  The view of the poster is both, real and at the same time irrevocable, captured in the photograph of the same scene.
The photographs represent quasi materialised congealed sceneries of time, which inspire the beholder to reflect on reality and its image by visualising the local compliance with the real situation. In order to achieve that, the artist employs various aspects of representation such as trompe-l’oel - the game of deception combining real and intended space, mise en abyme - the endless repetition of a theme, or the alleged identity between genuine and photographic reality, with the use of mirrors, light boxes or photographic processing making it even more mysterious. The charm of the works is that on the one hand they are only possible in this specific location, because here image and reality meet one another, and on the other hand the artistic concept can be described as universal, because the question whether something is considered an image or reality reflects existential sensitivities of human beings. What the viewer perceives is always no more than a fragment of reality – in the photograph and in the real world alike. The immediate visual perception is limited. This is what photography shows us by means of its complete dissolution into the real. The real wall semantically recedes behind the image of exactly the same wall. Consequently, the image turns into the comment of the real object and the viewer perceives reality because it represents the central theme in form of the photographic section.
The paradox between architectural reality and sheer visualised reality in photography is indissoluble. Thus, a walk through the exhibition will be about reflecting on the presence and immediacy of the real world and the generation of reality in photography; especially in cases where elements from the world of perception, which are of special photographic attraction, are reproduced in a photograph. These include white wall areas, the interaction of light and shadow, a look out of a window, perspectives, the change of seasons, or details such as chairs, doors or columns. (Gaby Gappmayr)