Storyed
slides
The Berlin-based Norwegian artist Berit Myrebøe
worked for a month at DIEresidenz in Die, France, on two new series
on paper. The final exhibition “Super position” showed a
selection of these amalgams of superimposed photographs, drawing and
painting on different types of paper.
Berit Myrebøe creates
imaginary landscapes on aluminium or – as in DIEresidenz – on paper
by layering images and materials. The technique is reminiscent of
avant-garde photography of the 1920s and 1930s, when the photographic
superimposition initially resulted from an accident and artists
subsequently printed the photographic paper several times or combined
several negatives in the development process.
But Myrebøe
does more than “just” photography. Rather, she fights
against photography by changing this layer by layer. Her works thus
begin with a photograph – that of a landscape or a human body. In
selecting these “photo-sketches” (according to the artist),
she prefers photographs that capture a movement, a moment of
transition, that are somewhat indistinct and already have a painterly
aspect. “Transition” is a key word in Myrebøe’s working
method, because the motif never remains the same.
The artist
transfers her photographic sketches onto aluminium plate, using the
transfer printing process, a printing technique used in lithography,
for example, to turn the mirror-inverted image around. Once on metal,
Myrebøe removes the context of her main motif using various solvents
and adds layers or elements of oil paint. From this intervention she
takes a photograph again, which can be treated in the same way over
several cycles.
In Die Myrebøe works on paper, superimposing
sheets of different textures, shades of white and transparency. She
scratches and rubs away parts of the previously printed, transferred
picture base, draws and paints on it with charcoal, chalk, oil paint
and paint sprays. By applying varnish or linseed oil, she gains
transparent or shiny parts of the picture, thus highlighting or
hiding details of the “original” picture – from which she
is moving away more and more. In this way, the initial photograph is
increasingly transformed into a drawing, collage or painting.
The
artist often works serially with the same motif, which she then
overlays with different layers and reworks in different ways, each
time emphasizing certain elements. The repetition of the motif is
reminiscent of film sequences – even though Myrebøe does not tell a
story. Rather, they are juxtaposed snapshots, shreds of dreams or
memories.
Finally, the repetition appeals to comparative
vision. The portraits of women, for example, are only identical at
first glance. Then one discovers the different backgrounds and the
different techniques of processing the printed image, which is almost
destroyed to let light or a hidden motif shine through the paper.
Myrebøe calls her works “light pictures” and thus, despite
or perhaps because of her interventions, ultimately finds herself
back at her starting point: photography. (Conny Becker, DIEresidenz,
2019)
*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***