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Ricarda Roggan‘s photographs show interiors without
any people. Bright rooms contain arrangements of used furniture. The pieces
of furniture are simple in their design; functional and rather inconspicuous.
Their only specific marks are traces of heavy use telling a story about
permanent application and handling. The compositions are deliberately
constructed with used furniture. An ensemble may bring to mind a room
within a factory, a temporary place to sleep or a doctor‘s surgery.
The ensemble varies but it is always photographed in the same uniform
room. The view is mostly frontal towards the small, long stretched rectangular
room. The white, windowless walls and scrappy red-brown flooring brings
to mind a vacated room or cell. Diffused light from a source outside the
picture frame shines over the entire arrangement. The room cannot be defined.
Its function or dedication is not clear. The viewer becomes irritated
and rightly questions its authenticity.
Ricarda Roggan extracts ensembles of furniture from their original context
of deserted houses and closed industrial ruins. She then transfers them
into an anonymous model room of her own creation.
The detailed reconstruction of the furniture‘s original arrangement
in the constructed model room brings a representation of its past. At
the same time it points at the “intentionlessness“ of the
primary constellation. In contrast to the neutral room, the furniture
appears removed and cut out of its previous context. The furniture is
transformed within the constructed scene to appear as an isolated relic
of another reality. The furniture revives the room in a mysterious way
and hints at the subjective interpretation of places and objects.
In her photographs Ricarda Roggan outstretches and unfolds the spatial
and contextual density of the original arrangement. The authentic history
of the furniture remains in the dark. Focus is not on narration; it is
on the process of constructing picture realities. The photograph creates
a concentrated reflective picture that represents the realisation of abstract
ideas. It is preceded by the deliberate creation of a room installation
related to a found spatial reality. With the consequent repetition of
the furniture‘s constellation, Ricarda Roggan puts the theme of
photography‘s reproductivity into focus. First the photographic
motive and then the photograph itself each reproduce a reality.
Since its discovery the media of photography has been understood within
the paradigm of documentary illustration. With the advent of digital production
and manipulation the viewer now suspects illusion or idealisation instead
of believing in authenticity. In particular, the artistic approach taken
by recent classic analogue photography is spearheading the media-reflexive
and aesthetic discourse about perception and representation of reality.
Thomas Demand‘s photographs of paper models reconstructing motives
of pictures, Miriam Baeckstroem‘s deconstructive shots of film scenes
and Oliver Boberg‘s photographs of fictional architecture models
can be seen as examples. With their architectural and interior related
themes these artists hint at the construction of perception and reality.
These artists create metaphors of reality in their work with model spaces.
In this process one understands that constructed realities are not only
a phenomenon within art, but also an intrinsic part of the contemporary
world‘s perception of itself.
Simone Förster
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