E V A P E T R I Č
ART MONOGRAPHS
@PPLEGIRL STORY2,
TO BE A SHADOW
OR A PUPPET…
What will our world be like without emotions, and will anyone even miss them? This question, provoked by the concern that life in current circumstances of constant digital connectivity and instant “likes” and emoticons” is heading into a state where emotions are increasingly losing their role and are retreating into cliches, has motivated the visual artist and author Eva Petrič to create ”@pple girl story2, to be a shadow or a puppet…” the multilayered story within the hybrid of a book and an interactive art object.
Among the emotions that seem to be most endangered in the present world of instancy at all times is longing - the emotion without which most of the greatest literary creations could not have come into being, especially poetry – and without which there would even be no need for it. Longing is the main theme pervading Eva Petrič’s “@pple girl story2, to be a shadow or a puppet…”.
The multilayered story and its book (square format, hard cover, 356 pages, with 170 visual aphorisms and 170 text images of emotions) is a hybrid by its content as well as its form. It is a hybrid of a literary story, switching between a fairytale and a contemporary email dairy, and the visual dictionary of emotions among which many are on the brink of extinction. The text itself is a hybrid between image and sentences, spread out over paper of different colors in ways where sentences form visual images. With the interplay of images in different saturation, from color to black and white, and to black and white superimposed on color; at the same time depicting figures in their material forms of bodies as well as in their immaterial forms as shadows, the book enables viewers various ways of perception and possibilities of creating one’s own stories.
Eva Petrič: “The character of my color staged photographs is a puppet, unaware of its shadow - the real emotion which pulls the strings of the character making it a puppet. Shadows applied to the color images act as catalysts. Hopefully they enable reactions between the image and the viewer to occur. At the point of fusion, narratives overlap. A new dimension arises, showing the state where the shadow acquires characteristics of the body, appearing fleshier, and the body acquires characteristics of the shadow, appearing more ephemeral.”
TRANSapPARENT
A photographic journey, Ed. by Bariaa Mourad and Lucien Clergue. An artist's-book with contributions by: Lucien Clergue, Martina Corgnati,Michael Pilz, Boris Podrecca, Peter Weiermair and Bariaa Mourad
Published in partnership with Künstlerhaus Vienna Barcelona [etc.] : Triton, 2013
From the book reviews:
Lucien Clergue: Let's read her poetry through her images all together, and be carried away from this world to meet Eva in her own wonderland….
Martina Corgnati: By concentrating on the capture of the reflection, Eva Petric is realizing a kind of photography to the square, a double of the double that succeeds with singular effectiveness to "render opaque" the virtual plane separating the image from reality; she, in other words, insists on showing the reflection of the real as such, naked, insists in "kick against the walls of the white cube", sighting Rosalind Krauss.
Peter Weiermair: Die Transparenz der Bilder, das Übereinanderliegen verschiedener Realitätsebenen, die Tiefe, die in der Reproduktion Fiktion bleibt, jedoch in manchen Installationen unterschiedliche Aspekte der Realität und damit der Bilderzählung betont, ist auch hier in diesem Buch ihr Anliegen…
Michael Pilz: What do these pictures hide in the deep, which they secretly know but do not tell us in ordinary langugage? They do not illustrate, they do not refer, or represent something not already at encrypted embassies. Call us to meet them at eye level – find the embassy in ourselves. The true sense only opened within the concrete, vivid encounter…
Boris Podrecca: In Eva Petric‘ Spektrum wird kein allzu bestimmender Sinn oder eine eindeutige Lesbarkeit offenbar. Der Reiz ihrer thematischen Wanderungen liegt gerade im permanenten Fluss von Umwegen, wo eine allzu lineare Bedeutung ausgeschaltet wird. Gerade in unserer Kultur der Überschwemmung bleibt ihr Werkzeug vermarktungsimmun und ihre feminine Sichtbarkeit ist lediglich based in me…
WEBbing
Art monography, published by Drava, Klagenfurt, 2018
Eva Petrič's WEBbing is a »hybrid« of her visual art in the medium of lace and creative writing with which she presents the web of her 25 art installations in the medium of lace assembage. Made in the period of 2012-2018, they have been installed worldwide, from CC Burges in Buenos Aires to the United Nations in New York, from St. Stephan's Cathedral in Vienna to the ancient Baptistry in Piran… Connected into one web by the artist's perception of lace representing hematomas they seem to exist as a collective web, which surpasses time and space. Hematomas occur not only when the wall of blood vessels is damaged and blood leaks into surrounding tisues where it does not belong. We, as a society or as indiviudals, can ourselves be hematomas when emotional barriers break and emotions explode… Petric's hematomas are further tied into one common web by their ephemerality: when the artist deinstalls them, they cease to exist and can never again appear in the same form – except in this monography.
The phenomenon of webbing is the common thread to all of the Petrič's lace installations: webbing defines our life and existence on all levels, from the macrocosmic level in space to the microcellular level within our bodies. Eva Petrič presented these levels in her 25 projects made from inherited, discarded, donated or at flea markets from around the world bought handmade laces. Eva Petrič: “These recycled laces represent and illustrate the interconnectedness and interdependence amongst us. I perceive them as our other skin, as a collective skin.”.
Unlike usual art catalogs, this book presents the ideas behind the installations, not just in the images and scholarly texts. Rather, it reaches into the "backstage" where the ideas responsible for giving birth to the installations are presented in a unique way, through "visual" poetry accompanied with a new series of images. These appear throughout the book, serving as markers for each new section and presenting the idea behind the particular lace installation.
The book (hard cover, A4+ format, 288 pages) contains also texts on webbing from 11 authors of various professions, nationalities and age.
Regular Edition: 500
Artist Edition: 35
LIGA - MAGAZIN
Climate change does not stop at state borders...
Climate change does not stop at state borders - it affects rich and poor, as the current flooding in Europe shows... My photo series illustrate the special Liga-magazine of the Austrian Liga for Human Rights on the right for an intact environment.
As the current extreme weather (which is probably one of the alarming signs of current climate change) in Europe and elsewhere shows, climate change does not stop at state borders. It affects or will affect everybody. Where and how can we assure the right for a safe environment to everybody? This is the theme of the current special issue of the LIGA Magazine, published by the Austrian Liga for Human Rights. I am honored that the editor invited me to participate in this magazine with a series of my photographs.
The photographs with which I participate in the magazine, originate from my work in the last ten years and from different locations around the world.
This issue of the Liga Magazine brings also an extensive article on the stance of the Austrian president Alexander Van der Bellen on this vital matter for all of us.
Kindly invited to read the opinions published in this Liga Magazine.