Displacement

Stefan Reiterer’s artistic practice is characterized by an intensive examination of digital image creation processes and their potential to depict and manipulate threedimensional spaces. For his exhibition Displacement he is developing a walk-through installation that runs through all of the gallery rooms. Meter-long strips of canvas stretch from the ceiling to the floor. Some of them adapt to the surrounding architectural conditions, some of them resist this by running through walls, protrusions, and windows. Reiterer’s installation plays with the spaces and redefines them. It stands in the way of visitors and at the same time opens up new directions, lines of sight, and perspectives. They direct the way of walking without giving a clear goal—orientation, disorientation, and reorientation alternate. Reiterer’s room installation is part of the Texture Mapping series that he has been following for several years. In 3-D computer graphics, the term describes a process in which spatial models are provided with two-dimensional images, so-called textures. These digital textures are now transferred into real space by Reiterer in the form of strips of fabric and covered with the simplest painterly means: lines or hatching. The surfaces that are used in “texture mapping” to digitally synthesize spatiality are now physically placed in the exhibition space. In this way, the digital space is expanded into the architectural space, so to speak. The supposed three-dimensionality in the digital gives way to a “real,” tangible, and accessible space that gets by without any illusionism. Nothing is hidden or embellished. The properties of the canvas as well as the wooden construction are emphasized, the topicality and presence of the materials highlighted. Reiterer's illusionistic paintings, which also deal with the manipulation of space, are in tension with the undulating forms of the installation. For the works from the Templates series, Reiterer draws on already completed paintings and collages. They show abstract structures, spontaneously applied markings, but also detailed rendered aerial and satellite photos of Earth (the latter generated and downloaded with the Google Earth software). These mostly small-format works on MDF boards are scanned three-dimensionally and processed digitally. In the virtual space of the computer it is possible to change the work as desired. They are bent, overlaid with new image data, or distorted. They seem to change into a different state of aggregation and then consolidate again in a new form. The back of the panel might bend forward, and the painted surface suddenly disappears or the image carrier arches in various directions. In this way, the flat paintings in the digital become expansive objects. From the almost infinite variety of possibilities and views, Reiterer then selects a variant, which he in turn captures with the classic means of painting on wood. The bends, heights, and depressions are rendered illusionistically on the flat plate. Just as orientation and disorientation alternate in the labyrinth of fabric panels, clarity and ambiguity, stability and chaos are intertwined in Reiterer’s paintings. Whole cities and regions seem to merge with one another and to blur before our eyes. Rock formations and streets are distorted almost beyond recognition or overlaid with monochrome colored areas. When looking at it, one gets caught in a vortex of structures flowing into one another that seem to swallow themselves. One is seized by a dizziness, the world begins to lurch and slips from our view. In this way, Reiterer’s digitally manipulated and painterly recorded compositions become an impressive image of our world, which seems to be getting more and more out of joint. Stefan Reiterer (*1988, Waidhofen/Thaya) studied “Extended Painterly Space” at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and the Faculdade de Belas Artes in Portugal. His works have been shown in numerous international solo and group exhibitions, including in London, New York, Berlin, São Paulo, Prague, and Los Angeles. His works are represented in the Austrian Belvedere Gallery, the Lower Austria State Collection, the MUSA City Collection of Vienna and the Collection CCA Andratx, Mallorca.