Collected
Series of collages from C-Prints (Fujicolor photo paper matte)
In situ wall collages, various dimensions
2023-2024
“Michaela Putz‘s archive includes photographs of endangered plant species collected on the web, including the often detailed descriptions of their various stages of life - for example, the Artemis Alba with buds, its feathery foliage, blossoms, seed stand, but also its amazing scent of cola is described by the user:inside. Image data are exposed as C-prints and these (always) rectangular photographs are cropped in a next step, some follow the outlines of flowers, others take on new organic forms. Different stages of life are combined and composed into collages. Even the otherwise invisible screen on which Michaela scrolls along her search results becomes visible when the artist photographs some of the plants from the screen and a keyboard partially burned into the Retina display of the Macbook after years of use becomes visible as a bright outline, just like dust, scratches or fingerprints. Even tools of image processing, such as the magnifying glass, become part of the composition. But especially with the decision to compose blurred parts in an intertwined way, Michaela Putz takes back the pragmatics of the fact-based research work and gives the plants back their sensuality.”
- Ruth Horak, translated by Paula Marschalek
“Pixels, cursors and the materiality of the user interface itself thus also become part of her images; the otherwise invisible is constantly visualized. At the same time, the artist also illustrates her own artistic practice, with which she examines the structures that make up modern existence. In terms of content, however, she refers less to the archival than to processes of human memory and its processual, changeable structure. By approaching her works - only seemingly unsystematically, constantly searching, changing or adapting - Putz works like memory. This “...proceeds in a fundamentally reconstructive way: it starts from the present and thus inevitably leads to a shift, deformation ... revaluation, renewal...” (Aleida Assmann, Memory Spaces, 2018, 29).
The digital as well as manual manipulations/interventions of the artist, which occur when unlocking, swiping or zooming in on the user interface, become painterly gestures and produce new creations based on the traces of the original image or natural templates. In Putz's work, past and present collide and are condensed into a single image. The artist always strives for multi-layeredness and complexity. Oscillating between different working methods and discourses, she generates a subtly interwoven system of overlapping narratives.”
- Birgit Laback (translated from German)
︎︎︎Full text by Birgit Laback
