The Photographic I – Other Pictures is the first part of a diptych spread over two years. The exhibition comprises new and existing work by around 20 international artists and photographers ranging from the 1960s to the present. The selection demonstrates a lively interest in the power of the still image as a means of examining the world. It concentrates on indefinable images with an open view, whose multi-layering requires slow reading.

photographies Dirk Pauwels.

The films and photos of Aglaia Konrad (1960, Salzburg) take architecture and the urban space as their subject matter. Aerial shots, street views and angular cut-outs of the built environment in metropolitan cities emphasize the physical and psychological impact of mostly modernist façades, con- crete housing blocks, peripheral neighbourhoods, shipyards and generic non-spaces such as airports, roadways and other infrastructure. Her keen observations of the empty metropolis simultaneously expose the economic, historical and social layers of a globalized society. A major part of her oeuvre consists of in situ installations of large-scale photographic prints stuck directly onto glass or walls, thus creating tension between the spaces depicted in her photographic images and the physical space of the exhibition architecture – a strategy that lies at the heart of her artistic practice. The monumental geometry of her montages, grids and spatial interventions, moreover, amplifies the abstract nature of her photo stills. Every presentation, whether in an exhibition space or in one of her artists’ books, reinterprets selections from her prodigious archive, displaying a love of systematic lists and collections, particularly for the alphabet and atlases. Aglaia Konrad lives and works in Brussels.

Gent (B), The Photographic I – Other Pictures, SMAK, du 7 octobre au 07 janvier 2018

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