Exhibition and presentation of the Instant Edition # 2
In contrast to the classic paper collage, Thomas Draschan has composed the pictures of his 5-part series “In Extenso” from subjects from his digital archive comprising several thousand pictures.
In contrast to commercial commercial art, which always wants to conceal the production process and therefore, to put it in Draschan’s words, “always looks photo-hopped,” the artist attaches great importance to the fact that the individual components are still recognizable as such. On the one hand one can perceive the overall composition, but on the other hand one always sees the individual elements. In other words: the genesis of the work is always comprehensible. The artist says: “Sometimes it’s about reflecting on the medium itself, namely beyond self-referentiality”. In Draschan’s compositions, for example, one repeatedly encounters multilayered worlds of colour and representation that cannot normally be experienced all at once in this way. “It’s like a staggering of levels of reality,” says the studied experimental filmmaker, who has made a name for himself, among other things, with his found footage films.
In his pictures, the artist has often worked with contexts, gaze axes, and narrative elements. In this series, however, he deliberately attempted to push them back in order to emphasize formal relationships. “The series is therefore more graphic than narrative,” the artist sums up.
In domestic use one would speak of a pattern mix in this context, since the individual subjects more or less collide with each other. The artist leaves nothing to chance, each object finds its formal counterpart and even an inconspicuous splash of paint has its own place. Where Draschan used to mostly allow worlds of ideas to meet, sensual qualities now increasingly communicate with each other.
For the entertainment of his audience, the artist does almost everything. But instead of juggling with plates on sticks, he does so with colours and shapes.
Text: Lucas Cuturi
Opening on 11.03.2013 at 19:00h
Exhibition duration 12.03. to 15.04.2013
Project Space Lucas Cuturi, Neustiftgasse 107/5, 1070 Vienna, Austria
