René Kanzler

Industrial Peace, #3 / #4, 2016

René Kanzler links his technical and photo-historical analysis of the photographic image with questions from the fields of sociology, philosophy and visual studies. He begins his work process—in contrast to traditional photographic approaches—with already duplicated motifs. Stored electronically as abstract data sets, through cropping and editing these motifs are transformed back into graphics, which the artist refers to as imaginary photographs. The title of the series Industrial Peace refers to the fragility of an economic-political snapshot. As viewers, however, we see a nature motif, made alien by solarization effects, divided into two vertical-format images. These can be read both separately and as an ‘imaginary’ unit, i.e., as a third image arising in the imagination. This initiates a process within the viewer’s faculties of perception and reflection, which reveals action, interpretation and rules as constitutive aspects of reality in the world of economic law.