translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
171212: Galerie Michaela Stock: Marko Zink – Im Kurhotel
Galerie Michaela Stock
Marko Zink – Im Kurhotel
14.11.2012 – 12. 01.2013
Total recall in a spa hotel
By Margareta Sandhofer
Due to its omnipresence, the transience of earthly existence remains to be a continuously attractive topic. And it is not necessarily logical that focussing on vanitas in fine arts almost exclusively refers to the joyous facets of the same. Marko Zink’s photo work presented at the Gallery Michaela Stock also involves additional aspects.
Nothing in this genre is new: a barely or possibly unidentifiable person in a bleak, perceptibly abandoned building, a former luxury spa is shown on a large reproduction with a “poor” resolution, nostalgic and sentimental, something people enjoy. Add a touch of eroticism and some humour, mysterious encryption of the spatial situation: these are effective exercises, well-established, pleasing, and easily accessible and therefore successful – subtly enriched with open ambiguity by Marko Zink.
Especially the presented selection of photographs from the series “Im Kurhotel” (In the Spa Hotel) stands – similar to film stills – for the hidden stories. Unspoken or unpronouncable narrations appear as the shortest moments of encounters. These are encounters in a reciprocal relationship between three components, the depicted person as the protagonist, the strange environment, which has the same relevance as the human actor, and the photographer. The close-ups directly involve the recipients and, at first glance, Marko Zink imposes the photographer’s own position. At a second glance, the formal staging and treatment of the film material is obvious and creates a distance.
Zink made his analogue photos with a “cooked” film, which was scanned after it was developed. The damaged film is hardly durable, the treatment has left its traces on the photos: colour nuances have atomized into small colour dots, some parts are fuzzy and blurred. Formally, the “poor” quality is used as a form of exaggeration. Content-related it could be considered as a simulation of human memory.
This is what the selected motives and excerpts suggest. Rooms, people and details as well as the plot, only appear as fragments – the big picture remains unclear and provokes associations – both melancholic and painful. Human perspectives superimpose the technical perspective of the camera, human proportions and shapes find analogies in the furniture. With its temporary existence, in essential vulnerability, the human presence lends the environment some substance, and on the other hand the individual is charged with the flawed atmosphere of its environment. Therefore, the individual as the subject and the hotel and its furniture as the object can no longer be separated.
But above all, instantaneousness dominates the respective situation. The illustrated encounter is seen as an ephemeral phenomenon that is vanishing; deprived of a timely definition. It is not relevant if it was really experienced, available at present, or visionary. What remains are traces in memory, mysterious rudiments, the original absconds – just like Marko Zink’s “cooked” film will fall apart anytime soon.
Galerie Michaela Stock
1040 Vienna, Schleifmühlgasse 18
Tel: +43-1-920 77 78
email: info@galerie-stock.net
http://www.galerie-stock.net/
Opening hours: Mon - Fri 15:00 hours -19:00 hours, Sat 11:00 hours -15:00 hours
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171212
Galerie Michaela Stock (alte Location)
1040 Wien, Schleifmühlgasse 18
Tel: +43-1-920 77 78
Email: info@galerie-stock.net
http://www.galerie-stock.net/
Öffnungszeiten: geschlossen
Galerie Michaela Stock (alte Location)
1040 Wien, Schleifmühlgasse 18
Tel: +43-1-920 77 78
Email: info@galerie-stock.net
http://www.galerie-stock.net/
Öffnungszeiten: geschlossen