Karaoke – Photographic Quotes

Seems familiar? We are constantly bombarded by images and information – at school, at work, in newspapers and on the web. All of these stimuli carry a multitude of underlying codes. Day in and day out, we navigate our way, more or less successfully, through a torrent of texts and images, subtle advertising messages and hard facts, official instructions and personal messages. New and long-established media alike vie for our undivided attention.

What we tend to overlook is the fact that we are increasingly subject to a second, media-dominated reality in which we are no longer directly involved. The exhibition Karaoke – Photographic Quotes with works by Becky Beasley (GB), Thomas Galler (CH), Aneta Grzeszykowska (PL), Thomas Julier (CH), Anja Manfredi (A), Ryan McGinley (USA), Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs (CH), Clunie Reid (GB) and Oliver Sieber (D) explores this densely woven tapestry of direct and indirect experience, of immediate and mediated seeing.

The exhibition quietly flags up the relationships and juxtapositions that permeate our casual, everyday navigation of parallel worlds. The young generation of artists presented here deploy hybrid imagery, montage and appropriation, while at the same time expressing a keen and critical awareness of their social and artistic origins. Drawing their inspiration from the same highly charged interaction between found images and creative originality that was the driving force behind modernism right from the start, these young artists use visual elements of performance, installation and cinema to map out new territory in contemporary art photography.

The exhibition was curated by Thomas Seelig. A cooperation with the Fotohof Salzburg.

Main sponsor: UBS