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Rita Nowak (*1979)
Game, Vienna, 2009
Item number 057-00423
Nowak is known for her large-format photographic works, tableaux vivants, for which she artistically stages her models in the studio, landscape or urban space. She finds inspiration for her pictorial concepts in art history, for example in paintings by Goya or Manet. The motif of the female nude in the forest is in the tradition of classical painting and was also varied by the Impressionists and representatives of modernism.
On closer inspection, however, it becomes apparent that in Nowak's photograph two bodies are lying close together on the forest floor in opposite positions. The figure at the back is almost completely concealed by the figure in front and under a faux fur blanket. The draperies also integrate the two bodies into their surroundings in terms of color. Artificial (sometimes artistic) poses of several models are frequently found in Nowak's art, which defies anecdotal-narrative readings and creates autonomous poetic pictorial spaces. Themes unfold in these, such as the traditional gender-specific attribution of an empathic connection between women and nature (in contrast to the instrumentally dominant relationship to nature of men). The English title "Game" refers on the one hand to a playful, i.e. non-purposeful setting, and on the other to hunted prey.
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Chromogenic print
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Image dimensions 95 x 75 cm (95 x 75 inch)
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Mounting, Framing In original white wooden frame 119 x 102 cm
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Annotations
Stamped, dated, signed and edition note »4/5« in black ink on the reverse -
Literature
Astrid Köhler, Déjà-vu-Effekte. Intertextualität und Erinnerung in inszenierter Fotografie, Bielefeld 2018, Cover. -
Prints / Austrian Photography / Limited Editions / Österreichische Fotokünstler_innen / Emerging / Inszenierte Fotografie / Fotokunst / Farbfotografie / Akt /