Dunja Evers - "I Had A Dream"

Opening: Friday, May 14, 2004, 7pm
Duration: May 14 through July 10, 2004
Opening Hours: Tu-Sa 12-7pm

Despite knowing the limitations of our senses and their inadequate capacity, we still believe that what we see is reality. But our senses, without mentioning our understanding, are easily confused. With our society’s growing technological capability, reality becomes increasingly elusive: this applies as much for the present as for the past. Reality is neither that which we acknowledge nor that which we remember. This perception is clearly conveyed through Dunja Evers’ photography. This is because her pictures deny anything easily recognisable. Initially, they seem like empty monochrome paintings, with only an impression as to subject matter. With Dunja Evers, the reproductive aspect of photography is lost in innuendos, virtually becoming an art form in its own right. A connection to concrete motifs is less significant than the effort to convey a mood, subjective by means of both association and feelings. The viewer adopts the reality of the photographs, because the seemingly familiar image is in alignment with subjective memories.
Her latest work – a video installation created for the KUTTNER SIEBERT Galerie – is also dedicated to this theme. Her interest lies in the meaning of technical apparatus in relation to the construction of reality and rousing narrative. The cinematic presentation of a video-eight projector shows the unique movement of the film spool from a static perspective, whilst the sound of the projected film is audible. Even though the images are not visible, the recognisable film music may give the viewer access to associative moods and, consequently, trigger off subjective memories.
Another video shows a record player. The arm is gradually approaching the end of the recording. The meaning of the two films is revealed through the simplicity of the film spool image or the view of the turntable. It illustrates and narrates a sense of continuity within dissected and reconstructed digital information. Analogue mediums represent an intrinsic concept of time which is becoming increasingly meaningless in the digital age.
Super-eight film is linked to the seventies like no other medium. Evidence of this is an excerpt lasting a few seconds from a film about the moon taken from the Apollo 16 on its return in 1974. It is a video of a projected film, so that the sound of the astronauts’ radio conversations is combined with the sound of the projector. However, as opposed to the film of the record player with the music or the film of the projector with the sound of an invisible movie, this video irritates because of the lack of concrete information. The image is too vague and the accompanying sound too fragmented for the viewer to immediately understand the setting. Ultimately, Dunja Evers’s main theme is the construction of reality on another level, one where the authenticity of the pictures is in doubt.