(english version)
Für seine Videos engagiert Stefan Panhans die von ihm ausgesuchten
Models zu einem Casting, beschreibt ihnen die gewünschte Bildqualität
und lässt die Models dann dazu vor der Videokamera Kostproben abgeben.
Dazu spielt er jeweils passende Hintergrundmusik ab, deren Länge
auch die Länge des "Castings" bestimmt. Er selbst schaut
während dessen nicht mehr durch die Kamera, sondern wendet sich ab
oder verlässt den Raum. Nachträglich klärt er die Models
dann über den "Fake" auf. Die entstandenen Clips machen
uns zu Voyeuren eindringlicher, absurd wirkender, kleiner Dramen oder
vielleicht noch treffender: "Mini-Reality-Soaps" der alltäglich
- nicht nur in Fotostudios - verrichteten Arbeit individueller Annäherungen
an gesellschaftlich prägnante Rollenmuster und Posen.
Seine neue Serie Fotografien von Shoppingstars scheint aus einer Art,
fast surreal anmutenden globalisierten Echopark zu kommen, in dem die
ProtagonistInnen sich bemühen, die Haltungen, Styles und Posen ihrer
supranationalen Vorbilder, die auf den für sie zugeschnittenen Medienkanälen
überall als Identifikationsangebote an sie verteilt werden, so gut
wie möglich nachzuahmen. Diese ständige Selbstinszenierung gelingt
ihnen teilweise so erstaunlich gut, dass man denken könnte, sie würden
eigentlich immer mit einer im eigenen Kopf eingebauten Kamera durch die
Welt gehen, durch die sie sich immerzu wahrnehmen und nach deren Wünschen
sie sich so fantastisch bildgerecht bewegen.
Kathrin Busch 2005 in einem Einladungstext der Galerie
Olaf Stüber Berlin:
" Die seit 2002 stetig komplettierte Fotoserie »Red Light,
White Sands, Black Palms« weist einen Fundus von mit der Kamera
en passant eingefangener Selbstinszenierungen auf, deren ProtagonistInnen
sich gekonnt in die Styles und Posen medial vermittelter, supranationaler
Vorbilder eingeübt haben und sich damit auf den Bühnen hochkommerzialisierter
Innenstadtlandschaften zeigen. Die offensichtliche 'Unkunsthaftigkeit’
der Fotografien verrät, daß die gekonnten Stilisierungen weniger
beim Künstler als aufseiten der Motive anzusiedeln sind, geht es
doch auch um die jeder konkreten Ablichtung vorausgehende Bildwerdung
des Subjekts unter dem diktatorischen Regime der Bilder. Dabei verschleift
die teilnehmende Beobachtung der Kamera die Möglichkeit kritischer
Distanznahme zugunsten komplizenhafter, sich der Schaulust nicht verweigernder
Recherchen. Für die neuesten Fotos der Serie läßt sich
eine Verlagerung verzeichnen hin zu seltsam, fast surreal anmutenden Szenerien
in denen sich Stile brechen, Unstimmigkeiten und Übertreibungen die
Klischees verdrehen bis sich die zuvor eindeutigen Semantiken verlieren.
Im collageartigen Aufeinandertreffen des Disparaten springen die Oberflächen
für andere, unvorhergesehene Bilder auf.
In seiner jüngsten Videoarbeit »Pool«, 2004 verstärkt
Panhans die befremdende, der Zusammenstellung des Heterogenen innewohnende
Kraft. Er ergänzt die bildliche um eine sprachliche Dimension und
läßt eine Schauspielerin in einem Smart vor unbestimmter Landschaft
sitzend einen Text rezitieren, der die Imperative der Selbststilisierung
formuliert. Im Widerstreit zur traumversunken-unwirklichen Inszenierung
steht die 7 minütige Aufforderung:
»Also hör mal, wir haben da so eine Produktion laufen, dazu
brauchen wir Leute, die sich was trauen, die zu sich stehen. Echte Charaktere,
ganz eigene, selbstbewußte Typen. Du müsstest einfach nur du
selbst sein, aber eben super, verstehst du? Be yourself but at its top!...«
Installationsansicht "Castings" und "Shoppingstars"
"Castings", Video
"Shoppingstars", Fotoserie
Encore, Encore!
Stefan
Panhans
Ausstellung vom 15. 2. 2003 bis zum 26. 2. 2003
Eröffnung am Freitag, 14. 2. 2003, 19.00 Uhr
ENCORE, ENCORE!
Stefan Panhans
For his videos Stefan Panhans selects models and invites them to a casting, tells them what kind of image he is looking for, and leaves them to practise in front of the video camera. As they do this, he plays appropriate background music whose duration also determines the duration of the “casting”. While this is happening, he no longer looks through the camera but either turns away or leaves the room. Afterwards he reveals to the models that it has been a fake. The resultant clips make us voyeurs of haunting and absurd small dramas, or maybe more accurately “mini reality soaps” of an everyday, - not just in a photo studio - personal struggle to come to terms with all-pervading societal roles and poses.
His new series Photographs of Shopping Stars seems to come from a kind of almost surreal, ostensibly global echo park, in which the protagonists attempt to emulate as far as possible the posture, style and poses of their supranational role models, who accompany them everywhere on their personalised media players, offering a constant model for self-presentation. The protagonists are sometimes so incredibly good at this self-presentation that you would think that they must always go through the world seeing it and themselves through a camera built into their heads, moving according to its demands and modelling themselves on its image with an uncanny accuracy.
Kathrin Busch 2005 in an invitation text for Galerie Olaf Stüber Berlin:
“The photo series »Red Light, White Sands, Black Palms«, which has been continuously expanded since 2002, is a pool of images showing moments of posing captured en passant by the camera. The protagonists have expertly rehearsed the styles and poses of supranational media role models and present themselves on the stage of the highly commercialised urban cityscape. The obviously “non-art” character of the photographs reveals that this practised styling is less on the side of the artist than on the side of the photographic motif, the issue here being that, under the dictatorial regime of images, the subject has already become an image even before the actual photograph is taken. The camera as participating observer precludes any possibility of critical distance in favour of an accomplice-like form of research, which does not exclude voyeurism. In more recent photos in the series there is a shift to strange, almost surreal scenarios in which styles become fractured, and the clichés twisted by discrepancies and exaggerations until the hitherto unambiguous semantics disappear. In a collage-like confrontation between disparate things, the surfaces burst open for other, unforeseen images.
In his most recent video work, “Pool” from 2004, Panhans further intensifies the alienating force, which is inherent to a juxtaposition of the heterogeneous. The visual dimension is supplemented with the dimension of language; an actress sits in a Smart in front of a non-specific landscape backdrop and recites a text describing the imperative of self-stylisation. Conflicting with the dreamlike, unreal setting, one hears the 7-minute-long demand:
“So listen, we’ve got a production going here, and we need people for it who dare to do things, who stick up for themselves. Real characters, completely individual, self-confident types. You just have to be yourself, but just great, you get it? Be yourself, but at its top,...”
Exhibition from 15. 2. 2003 to 26. 2. 2003. Opening Friday 14. 2. 2003, 7 P.M.
Stefan Panhans
For his videos Stefan Panhans selects models and invites them to a casting, tells them what kind of image he is looking for, and leaves them to practise in front of the video camera. As they do this, he plays appropriate background music whose duration also determines the duration of the “casting”. While this is happening, he no longer looks through the camera but either turns away or leaves the room. Afterwards he reveals to the models that it has been a fake. The resultant clips make us voyeurs of haunting and absurd small dramas, or maybe more accurately “mini reality soaps” of an everyday, - not just in a photo studio - personal struggle to come to terms with all-pervading societal roles and poses.
His new series Photographs of Shopping Stars seems to come from a kind of almost surreal, ostensibly global echo park, in which the protagonists attempt to emulate as far as possible the posture, style and poses of their supranational role models, who accompany them everywhere on their personalised media players, offering a constant model for self-presentation. The protagonists are sometimes so incredibly good at this self-presentation that you would think that they must always go through the world seeing it and themselves through a camera built into their heads, moving according to its demands and modelling themselves on its image with an uncanny accuracy.
Kathrin Busch 2005 in an invitation text for Galerie Olaf Stüber Berlin:
“The photo series »Red Light, White Sands, Black Palms«, which has been continuously expanded since 2002, is a pool of images showing moments of posing captured en passant by the camera. The protagonists have expertly rehearsed the styles and poses of supranational media role models and present themselves on the stage of the highly commercialised urban cityscape. The obviously “non-art” character of the photographs reveals that this practised styling is less on the side of the artist than on the side of the photographic motif, the issue here being that, under the dictatorial regime of images, the subject has already become an image even before the actual photograph is taken. The camera as participating observer precludes any possibility of critical distance in favour of an accomplice-like form of research, which does not exclude voyeurism. In more recent photos in the series there is a shift to strange, almost surreal scenarios in which styles become fractured, and the clichés twisted by discrepancies and exaggerations until the hitherto unambiguous semantics disappear. In a collage-like confrontation between disparate things, the surfaces burst open for other, unforeseen images.
In his most recent video work, “Pool” from 2004, Panhans further intensifies the alienating force, which is inherent to a juxtaposition of the heterogeneous. The visual dimension is supplemented with the dimension of language; an actress sits in a Smart in front of a non-specific landscape backdrop and recites a text describing the imperative of self-stylisation. Conflicting with the dreamlike, unreal setting, one hears the 7-minute-long demand:
“So listen, we’ve got a production going here, and we need people for it who dare to do things, who stick up for themselves. Real characters, completely individual, self-confident types. You just have to be yourself, but just great, you get it? Be yourself, but at its top,...”
Exhibition from 15. 2. 2003 to 26. 2. 2003. Opening Friday 14. 2. 2003, 7 P.M.