Martina Sauter, 'Duplications and Differences'
A woman's legs sprawled out on a bed, two hands clasping a tabletop, clothes folded neatly in a suitcase, a pen moving gingerly across a sheet of paper. Theatrical but enigmatic images. Perhaps they are familiar to you from the film 2046 by Chinese writer-director Wong Kar-Wai, the psychological thriller Marnie by Alfred Hitchcock or the music video for David Bowie's Survive. Or perhaps they rang a bell but you couldn't quite place them.
A large part of the artistic practice of Martina Sauter (b. 1974, living and working in Düsseldorf) consists of viewing moving images. She freezes and isolates grainy film stills – in her earlier work mainly from Hitchcock's Hollywood classics – and adds a new layer in the form of her own photographic work. In this way she adds new characters; this isolated and slightly enlarged detail plays the lead role in a new story that engages the viewer's sense of curiosity.
Sauter's collages turn the film's original editing inside-out. While a film director meticulously connects every detail to a harmonious vessel of meaning, Sauter unravels the same details to arrive at a deconstructed and adapted cinematic image that further increases the cinematic tension. In other works she changes the cinematic image by incorporating small strips of coloured paper with almost surgical precision. The reverse side of these works reveals layered, abstract collages that are on the one hand a negative of, and on the other hand in juxtaposition with, the figurative front side. It is precisely this ambiguity to which the title of Sauter's new exhibition (Duplications and Differences) refers.
The robots in the melancholic sci-fi romance 2046, with their slow emotional responses, do more than contribute to the suspense factor; they also fit within Martina Sauter's broader interest in identity and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is very much to do with creating a new (ideal) person, and in this regard the robots of 2046 share a position alongside Marnie and David Bowie in the collective memory. Both Marnie and David Bowie have a history of changing personalities: they created their own layered identity and frequently change their appearance.
Just like Marnie conjures up a new personality from the contents of her suitcase or Bowie changes persona with every new record, Martina Sauter adds a new layer to collectively-held images. The artist seeks to penetrate beyond the surface – which, in the case of the robots, Marnie and David Bowie, conceals more than it reveals – to access images that subtly excite and disturb. Her collages assume an uncanny quality – a tension, a friction – that knocks the viewer off balance. The familiar seems far removed. With her minimal interventions, Sauter activates the viewer: she encourages us to analyse the image and to challenge the deconstructed surface layer.