Inside the Studio
Gabriele Walter
What are the major themes you pursue in your work?
I am researching pictures of global spaces, with a focus on the contemporary ornament of globalization. My method is to appropriate images of the city through the use of photography and found pieces, with special attention on tapes (sticky-, barrier-, marking-, signal tapes) and well-travelled packing material. Those are marking space, creating own zones, banning, marginalizing, protecting, barricading. They are temporary, patching. Collaged, put in layers, cut, shredded, disrupted, glued, scanned, fragmented, they are mutating to “tapescapes”.
The decision to use the media acrylic glass, as transparent, two layer image carrier, aggravates by awareness the reception of the viewer and creates distance. Cut-outs, image transfers, multi-samples, multi-layer, double sided, the play with gloss and matte are the resources.
For me, art is the aesthetic organization of reality.
What was the best advice given to you as an artist?
Do not let yourself be manipulated by actual trends in art in an attempt to be successful. Stay authentic, find your theme and style, follow it constantly and improve.
Prefer to work with music or in silence?
Silence and the sound of the city.
If you could only have one piece of art in your life, what would it be?
I would love The Black Square by Kasimir Malewitsch, which is an iconic piece of modern art. I also love colors and materials. So I would also want Jockey Cheer Glut by Robert Rauschenberg. By working in what he called “the gap between art and life,” he developed an altogether new visual language based on collage as a microcosmos of an unbounded world. Throughout his career, he constantly experimented with new ways to construct a pictorial surface. This inspires me to keep on searching and experimenting in my works.
Who are your favorite writers?
Writers that inspired my work are mostly sociologists and philosophers:
Passagenwerk by Walter Benjamin, as he developed the central figure of the modern century, ‘der flaneur’; Of Other Spaces by Michel Foucault, which has inspired my artwork; Jean Baudrillard and his essay about graffiti, ‘Cool Killer, oder der Aufstand der Zeichen.’ I also love Naomi Klein and her work, No Logo, which is a cultural manifesto for the critics of globalization.
