09 Nov - 30 Nov 2017
Lale Tara is known for creating surreal, visually evocative adn often provocative photographic Works. Her narrative photography constructs alternative realities and explores the themes of blurred dualities, bringing fourth tendencies that run counter to dominant cultural canons, intentionally treading the line between different artistic media, between history and contemporaneity, between cultures, between self and other.
Whereas, in the recent past, Lale Tara's images featured a life-sized doll as her Doppelg?nger, in her new series "MIRROR OR RIM" she simultaneously places herself within the scene and at the periphery of the scene, behind the camera: both in the mirror and at the rim. The works explore the absurdity of time and space, and mirror the puzzling irrationality of the world with graceful visual wit, a regeneration of the spirit of DADA.
Particularly arresting is the image of the artist as a lamp, in which she is illuminated and illuminating, both the receptor and the emitter of light, the essence of the art of capturing shadows. The work is dedicated to Emmy Hennings.
In an image of a wedding couple we find a sly reference to van Eyck, with its mirror and pet dog, a picture that points to both past and future, humorously capturing attention and inviting us to examine its details more closely. The bi-directional character of these works is reflected in the palindromic title of the series.
Tara invited the Turkish contemporary artist Ali Elmacı to collaborate with her in another of the images. She poses for Elmacı as a model for his drawing while she captures the scene with her camera. Dedicated to Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.
The framed 50 SRF banknote is dedicated to Sophie Taeuber-Arp.
"MIRROR OR RIM" is a centennial homage to DADA and its concern with the humorously absurd and the defiant refusal to understand.
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