FOREST COMPLEX
Photography

17 April to 20 July 2024
Opening: Tuesday, 16 April 2024, 7 p.m.
BTV Stadtforum Innsbruck
Free admission

Register here
17 April to 20 July 2024
Opening: Tuesday, 16 April 2024, 7 p.m.
BTV Stadtforum Innsbruck
Free admission

Register here

Uta Kögelsberger

For example, East Tyrol. A foehn storm with high winds of up to 180 km/h. What took a century to grow is demolished in a matter of seconds. More than a million cubic meters of timber damage as the result of the fatal interplay of wind, snow buildup, drought and insect infestation. For forest owners an economic disaster. For the communities below these protective forests an ever-increasing threat.

The artist Uta Kögelsberger looks at how climate change impacts our forests. Her work practice is meticulous. For this project alone, she travelled to East Tyrol and the Ziller Valley seven times and spent a total of four months on site conducting research and countless conversations with experts and with those involved. From thousands of individual shots the incredible balance in the work of this artist begins to crystallise into one picture– a synthesis of information and emotion, insight and connectedness.

Information and Connectedness

At first glance one might think one is dealing with documentary work. This layer of perception, however, is repeatedly challenged, amended, transformed. In the calamity of man, who is desperately searching for a solution to a problem that he himself has created, and in the artist’s words, over which he has lost all control, objective reporting becomes story, facts lead to personal destinies, truths transform into examples. The artist’s means of expression in this project are film and photography, media capable of embodying and representing different qualities of time. The formal means she employs to achieve this end are often imperceptible. The subtly enhanced reflections of the markings on those trees selected to be felled. A raised perspective produces shots of raw force. The division of a video into three parts calls to mind the triptychs of historical altars. The aesthetic of a poetic enlightenment, of an enlightened poetry.

Uta Kögelsberger lives in London and California and is a professor of fine art at Newcastle University, England. She received the prestigious Royal Academy’s Charles Wollaston Award.

 

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