Elfie Semotan »

14 March – 28 July, 2024

Opening: Wednesday, 13 March, 7pm

Francisco Carolinum Linz

Museumstr. 14, A-4010 Linz
T +43 (0)732-7720 522 00
www.ooekultur.at
Tue-Sun 10am-6pm

Elfie Semotan: La Repubblica delle Donne, Palm Springs California, 2004
© Elfie Semotan

Elfie Semotan born in 1941 in Wels, Upper Austria, is a renowned photographer who has created an extensive body of work over the past 50 years. Her ability to dissolve the boundaries between art history, fashion, advertising campaigns, and the everyday using the means of photography has become a defining characteristic of her work.

The exhibition showcases a cross-section of her work, beginning with the series "o. T. (Birkenwald), New York, 1999," in which blurry silhouettes move through a dark, "natural" environment that reveals itself as an artificially constructed backdrop upon closer inspection. This series sets the tone for the exhibition: viewers are invited and challenged to unveil the fiction within the staging and discover parallels between nature, art, and the human body.

Elfie Semotan: The Happy Printer, Stillleben, 1980
© Elfie Semotan

Classical fashion photography is not to be found here, the artist deviates from the endeavour to create only aesthetically pleasing and glamorous images. Instead, the focus is on a deliberate departure from conventional norms. And unveil a less perfect and more enigmatic facet. The faces presented are often less perfect and inaccessible and elegant movements are not clichéd as an ideal, but instead shown in the form of unusual gestures.

Elfie Semotan's creative freedom in staging fashion campaigns is evident in the selected works for fashion house LISKA between 1999 and 2018, as well as in editorials for magazines such as Allure, D-Magazine, or Madame. Deep friendships with artists and designers and their appreciation of her ideas provided her with the space to implement extraordinary photographic productions. Her long, trusting collaboration with fashion designer Helmut Lang is expressed in fragmented, underexposed "backstage" photographs that provide insight into hurried moments before stepping onto the runway.

As early as the 1970s, Elfie Semotan created a series of constructivist-inspired photographs of landscapes and still lifes in which she explored the various qualities of light. Through the realization that light and shadow alone can make the inconspicuous unique, she found formal structures that also significantly influenced her later portrait photography and commercial work.

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