The Dialectics of Reflection

On the Work of Monika Kropshofer

Dr. Heinz Höfchen, 2012

The artistic procedure of Monika Kropshofer is determined by the discourse of the media: the basis of the works is her large-format photography, which she changes as a painter by means of applied layers of colour. Landscape and architecture photography is thus placed in a dialogue with simple, constructive forms, questioned and at the same time led onto other medial planes.

The photography gains aura-like quality through the painted intervention of concrete concepts. For Monika Kropshofer, it is first a matter of the personal reaction to her photographic motifs – this reflection turns around the tension relationship between reproduced acquisition of reality and the reality of painting. By means of the painted re-working of the photography, a new reality arises which throws up the urgent question of reproduction and reality. This metamorphosis pushes forward into a further sphere of reflection on the relationship between space, time and material. Here, the medial differences of the works create a dialectically effective approach to the work: poetry and geometry, sensuousness and concept, also space and surface are not thought of as opposites, but reflect unity.

Monika Kropshofer finds her photographic motifs in the most varied of locations. Rome, Athens, but also Vietnam or Iceland motivate discussion. Examples of one group of works, the venetian blinds from 2011, were taken in Southampton, Stockholm and Budapest. The artist in fact has her photographs printed on venetian blinds, technically a great challenge with an amazing effect. With these unusual print surfaces, Monika Kropshofer opens up a further component. Covering and uncovering the picture is added, and, even more is the immanent loss of substance in the reality depicted.