color correction

In their space-consuming, object-like and media-based installation “color correction” Stefan Lux and Michael Part investigate the relations between original and reproduction by focusing on both media production and reception processes, and visualizing these as interlocking.

In his works Stefan Lux often deals with anomalies in information transfer between analogue and digital media, while Michael Part is primarily engaged with analogue photography and the physical-optical and chemical processes on which it is based. The two artists share an interest in the experimental sounding of media characteristics, and purposefully integrate the “uncontrolled” aspect into their artistic production.

Michael Part’s object “untitled”, a non-photographic work with a photographic context, emerged from his study of a silver mine in Schwaz in the Tyrol. In the late Middle Ages Schwaz was the biggest silver mine in the world. Besides silver, green malachite was mined there: a mineral and visual indicator of silver deposits. On the one hand, malachite oxalate fixed in gelatin concerns the mining of malachite in the silver mine Schwaz, on the other hand, it represents a contrast to silver gelatin, which is used for duplicating in analogue photography. The lightly fluorescing green shade of the gelatin plates is subjected to a slow, uncontrollable process of dissolution due to its low lightfastness.

While photographing the work “untitled” Stefan Lux noticed that color fidelity is not possible in the reproduction of malachite oxalate, as color anomalies in respect to the original occur, probably for physical reasons. The green of the glasses is reproduced in the photographs as a blue tone. Thus the reproduction does not reflect the original, the color shade needs to be regenerated digitally at the computer to avoid losing the comparative value. This raises the question of the reproducibility of originals.

Stefan Lux’s video “tiff” forms a continuation and an artistically autonomous reproduction of Michael Part’s “untitled”. The faulty reproductions are superimposed with the malachite oxalate-gelatine plates mounted in a room sequence. Projection of the video “tiff” means that the newly evolved color values of the reproduction mix with those of the underlying original. In this way “untitled” can, in combination with its own reproduction, generate new color values and creates additional pictorial realities within the exhibition space.

In the tradition of artworks dealing with diverse object manifestations, Stefan Lux and Michael Part take this debate to a further level in their exhibition “color correction”. The own momentum of anomalies in information transfer is revealed, ultimately negating the concept of reproduction, the place of which is taken by that of a development with open outcome.