Rachel Rom by Romina Shama

Rachel commissions other artists to answer her interviews for her. She never appears at any of her shows. I, on the other hand am always there, looking for her. Sometimes I answer for her.

-is she at work?
-she’s a poet.
-and the shadows?
-they’re hers too.
-what is she studying?
-absence
-is she a player?
-she is a time traveler.

I am talking to myself. The strength of it all lies in this exercise. The impression of her art, used as a narrative that dwells on presence and absence. She calls attention on the space between the viewer and the art where the real action of all art piece takes place.

-what do you think of this blurry form?
-it distances.
-where is the art?
-everywhere

The idea is to wonder. If the author remains distant, the work has its own identity which surpasses the author and achieves full realization in its unfinished state. There is no author, no period nor answer. Like an idea that would forever remain an idea because it would lose all of its meaning if carried out.

-and the pieces?
-they’re kept in an evolutionary state
-who’s asking the questions?
-her transparent double
-then who's answering?
-someone else.

Without an ending, the artwork can never wear out; It keeps unfolding, it remains open and therefore can only renew itself. If the work escapes the author, it exists solely in its evolution, taking nourishment from time, while the author loses time. Hence, the photographic work is reversed. It lasts. It can restore life.

-I don't get it
-It's a filtering process to reverse the effect of photography.
-Sentimentalism?
-fake memory reconstruction
-referring to Rolland Barthes "The image produces death while trying to preserve life"?
-challenging it.
-and after that?
-She kept going
-Where?

She is looking for the right distance. A space between life and the idea of life. In this practice of re-photography and poetic montage, Rom blurs the notion of confusion between reality and the photographic image. These pictures of pictures create the illusion of distance and eternity, of a gap between the real life and its representation. The result is a fresco that drives the spectator into a shaky, interminable spiral.
-but what are they?
-dematerialization

Her installations reveal a process of deconstruction, fragmentation, multiplication and "mise en abyme" in a rigorously ordered reconstruction of her various photographs. Her timeless portraits are used as raw material, they are what we could call "readymade" images now part of a wider composition: an eternally unfinished installation, a seemingly infinite sequence of photographs.

-is it a performance?
-a way of life
-what then?
-an irreverent spirit
-is she a dadaïste?
-she prefers not to

Am 28.11.2013, um 15:12 schrieb Rachel Rom:

Dear Christoph

I was sorry you couldn't make it. It would have meant a lot to me to have you there. You'll understand why… I hope you find this interesting, as it is in many ways linked to our Berlin show.
You know I like to distance myself from my subjects and the pieces of art I make. When I stopped exhibiting my photographs as such. I took away their "art" status and they became part of a larger scheme. I started using them as raw material to depict my ideas and create the four installations you invited me to exhibit last spring at Künstlerhaus Bethanien.

So when my gallery asked me to present the same installations at my solo show, I decided not to exhibit the work the same way in Paris to keep it in constant evolution. And so, the exhibition took a different - yet obvious - form, as I used the "Berlin exhibition" as raw material and created an interiorization of it (sort of a reversed "inside out") using the new space as a canvas.
An exhibition inside another exhibition.
Here's the plan of scenography and a few photos of the exhibition itself.
The idea was to use the photos of my installations in the Berlin space to create a "trompe l'oeil" parallel universe and increase the distance layering. Only two "real" pieces of work are attached on the wall to complete the installations showed on the wallpaper. (In fact it was 4 in the final setting as you will notice)
I decided to stack the actual pieces of art (now downgraded) in the centre of the room and I framed the german presentation article about Rachel Rom in the window.
At the end of the exhibition I had the wall (with wallpapers) cut into pieces and I am now using them as a mount frame to nails bigger prints of the re-photographed polaroids on them. As you can see, the layering continues and is keeping our show alive in different forms.

My Kindest Regards
Rachel

-who's Christoph?
-the master of Künstlerhaus
-who are you?
-I am her. Does it matter?
-this is confusing.
-so what's the point?
-are you bored?
-sometimes.
-would you like to stop now?
-don't you?

(Préférée edited a limited edition book of the E.G.P Gallery exhibition. The book is a small fragmented piece of art that represents this exhibition installation. It is like piece of the exhibition itself as it was made by folding the gigantic wallpaper into 2, 4, 8… until the right size and hand stitch it together. )

www.rachelrom.com - www.artegp.com