Wizyta (Visit) by Filip Berendt (August 25, 2009) 
(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
Categories / Artistics Installations / Conceptual Photography / / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / Comments Off
curator statement - Roman Babjak on Filip Berendt
I came across the work of Filip Berendt at a sittcomm.award jury meeting. His series Visit immediately caught our interest. In that series he combines different artistic approaches: photography, performance, installation, sculpture, though the outcome is only seen as photography. He asked people to allow him into their homes and while they are away he constructed an installation using elements found in their places. After taking a photograph he restored the original situation. By selecting standpoint and composition Berendt prevents viewers from observing the whole installation. He allows them only the view selected by the artist. Visit is a potent contribution to contemporary photography. Roman Babjak is the curator and editor of photo.sittcom.sk, a web based project aimed at discovering and presenting young artists from Central and Eastern Europe working with video & photography.
Next / The Limits Between Space And Landscape / Previous / photo.sittcomm – a little bit of punk, day 4 /
Our poll "A photo essay always needs a great written story" closed. 267 people voted, 28% agrees, 72% disagrees. 233 people answered our follow-up question "Are you a photographer?" 82% indicated they are, 18% said no. Initially, negative answers to question #1 were almost 100% as was the pecentage of photographers among respondants. Then, when the level of non-photographers started to rise, the percentage of people indicating good text is always essential started to rise too. This seems to indicate that non-photographers think that adding good text to your photo essays is essential. In my opinion: if you want non-photographers to dig your work, you know what to do...
Filip Berendt, not knowing in advance the occupants of a given house or flat, reconstructs their memory portrait “recorded” in the objects found there, in the organization of space, in its proxemics. His activity is polemical with so modern a question of the consumerist society age: “to be or to have?” The artist seems to propose a third way in his photographs: “to be and to have”. It is a bold thesis, invalidating an idealistic assumption that “handsome is as handsome does.”
Berendt’s compositions constitute portraits without the main hero – the portrayed person being there. Instead, domestic appliances are peopled, so banal yet telling so much about us. (introduction text by Michal Suchora)
Artist statement In my work I combine a sculpture/installation and photography in one symbolic organism. In my projects I explore photography’s relationship with a sculpture/ installation. I’m interested especially in creating objects or sculptures/installation that exist purely for the camera.
The crucial question for me is the one about the status of the work - is it the photograph or the object itself that is the art? Personally, I think that the art is in the creative process as a whole. This use of photography gives the installation something permanent. Photography is a necessary part and, therefore, it has a higher status then documentation.
Filip Berendt (1975) lives and works in Warsaw, Poland.
Click weblink filipberendt.com or browse our archives
Out now! 50pm new issue
Sports Issue Magazine App
Posted in category 660
