The social construction of reality is Georg Petermichl’s primary interest. In his diverse practice that encompasses photography, sculpture, as well as conceptually charged exhibition displays, the Austrian artist tends to use the modus operandi of photography to envision such a complex subject. Its elements, i.e. moment, perspective, framing, the series, analogies and metaphor are important instruments to Petermichl „that let us approach and digest the overwhelming nature of reality.“ When these elements are deployed in just the right way, we get comprehension at its best: Photography is a medium which emphasizes and highlights our collective inability to grasp the “bigger picture” at once, but that also contains a democratic spirit in highlighting that this lack is more or less present for all of us, and in approximately the same way. Images then present themselves as places of understanding and connection.

Step-and-repeat advertising covers one of the walls of the booth. Fictitious branding creates a pattern that functions as backdrop, framing device, and showcase of imaginary sponsors. Two illuminated signs made by Ellen Schafer show photographs of found slogans connected to consumer culture, reading “The bags under my eyes are designer,” and “You don’t need lipstick. Lipstick needs you.” The blurred quality of the photographs creates a certain uncanny and ambivalent feeling toward the affective relationship to consumer products purported by the depicted motifs. Born out of the shop/buy/spend architecting of an American landscape, where lack of choice is disguised through an overabundance of the same, Ellen Schafer sifts through the material detritus of consumerism in its downward trajectory from new to resale to donation to landfill. Schafer’s work navigates feelings of intimacy and estrangement in a highly manufactured world, where the body is mined as a site of critical inquiry inextricably bound to commerce.