Markéta Othová: You don’t know me, but I know you / photo exhibition

Markéta Othová has been working with photography as a medium since the early 1990s and takes black and white photos almost exclusively. She arranges her large, unframed photographs, - which draw from the genre of both documentarism and of classical art photography, - in series resembling film sequences or in variable combinations, where juxtaposed empty interiors, everyday objects, still lifes, as well as street scenes may generate unexpected and even uncanny associations. The chosen object and event are lifted from their environment and relations by the special attention of the photographer and by the manner of installation, always designed for the given exhibition space. As a result, their representation is rendered indefinite; they seem to be transformed into metaphors exploring the domain behind figuration and visualization. The spectator is displaced from the position of undisturbed contemplation to progress through the stages of unsettling quest and the desire to decipher. While ceaselessly exploring the current potentials of photography as a medium, Othová’s works direct attention to the points of intersection and poetics of evocation and memory; reality and illusion; presentation and preservation.

The exhibition in Budapest, which is in part a selection particularly for the spaces of the Kunsthalle, Budapest is Othová’s first larger show since her 1997 introduction with “A Perfect World” at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Dunaújváros.