Famous faces – and yet always something enigmatic, unspoken in the gaze, in the expression; this is how the portrait studies by media artist Ilse Haider, transposed into sculptural form, show their ambivalent side. She takes her motifs from published media, star photos of fashion icons, actors, world-famous intellectuals – and yet something irritates the quick identification, something disturbs superficial image consumption.
Ilse Haider subjects the thousandfold published celebrity photos to a process of transformation and reinterpretation. The skilfully rehearsed pose of the models, the adjusted expression, the cosmetically corrected attitude of the original photo are transferred into a new sphere of perception: obliquely running, intersecting, densely interwoven lines alter the presence and stringency of the reworked portraits.
The viewer's act of seeing is put to the test: from which vantage point is the viewing together of image and Peddigrohr-Relief ideal? What distortions arise during the movement of looking, what remains, what disappears?
Normally one is not aware that seeing always means movement.