Viktoria Schmid makes traces of light visible and turns them into the central focus of how she deals with time and space. While we generally only pay secondary attention to the play of shadow and light, she manages to draw attention back to these phenomena and she does so with impressive reduction. Schmid always observes her immediate surroundings very precisely, interweaving and translating them into abstract cyanotypes and films. Schmid’s work makes us inescapably aware of the fact that a space is always different at different times, that space is “time-space.” This is especially striking in the series ‘time flies’. We see the identical part of a room, a detail, captured in a series of frames at specific temporal intervals. The differences in the individual images reveal how time constantly redefines spaces through light. Consequently, the piece also fulfills fundamental premises of cinema that are hallmarks of the artist’s entire oeuvre.
In her photographic works, the cyanotype is her preferred technique and one that she has perfected. A cyanotype is an early form of photochemical reproduction whose advantage is that its light-sensitive paper can be used under normal tungsten light and without a darkroom. A reaction only occurs after exposure to ultraviolet daylight. Depending on its intensity, the traces of light turn a lighter or darker blue while the shadows remain white. This reversal process into a negative image does not only show a phantom picture of the surroundings fragmented into cutouts and segments of time, ultraviolet light has its own wavelength that human eyes cannot see. In this way too, these frames produced without a camera become phantom images of a space.
Schmid’s works certainly possess a sensual quality but even more crucial is the strong correspondence between the techniques she uses and her conceptual ideas. This is the case for the piece Rota/Nida (RGB). Filmed outdoors in Spain and Lithuania, 16mm film plays an essential role here. The viewers’ eyes focus on the landscape, wherein wind and water determine temporal events. A roll of film was run through the camera three times and exposed with a different color filter at each pass. First red, then green, then blue. This method references early experiments with color film and matches how the eye’s photoreceptors separate colors. When condensed onto a single roll of film, the temporally staggered footage of the color separations generates perceptual patterns that go beyond human perceptions of time. The unity of different temporalities made in the film at one specific location and not manipulated in post-production, is directly connected to the site of their origin via the time they were filmed and not only through the resulting cinematic time. What becomes visible in the colorful superimpositions as well as in the repetitions and resulting differences is a celebration of the singularity of the past moment. By means of cinematic reproduction, Viktoria Schmid manages to demonstrate that every moment has never happened before and will never happen again.
In her work, she is interested in the space in which she lives and works. This can be her own, familiar apartment in Vienna or the initially unknown studio at one of her artist residencies. The resulting images of time (Zeitbilder) sharpen our perception of the everyday and alter how we see our own familiar space in that it can acquire something excitingly foreign and new. On the other hand, visual research of unfamiliar spaces can serve to make one’s surroundings more familiar.
Excerpts of the text Time Spaces (Zeit-Räume) by Siegfried A. Fruhauf
Opening on Friday 9 June from 18:00 to 21:00. The exhibition is on view until 8 July 2023. Open on Friday and Saturday from 14:00 to 18:00 and by appointment.
Where is Mrs. Ray? is a solo presentation of work by Viktoria Schmid and part of Liesbet Grupping’s artistic research, supported by the Flemish government and shown in chapters at violet.