THE FILTERED SELF: Petra von Kazinyan showed at Bucherer
It is no longer possible to imagine our everyday life without Instagram. The photo-sharing app, once an easily accessible photo album, has long since mutated into a representation platform where nothing is as it seems. The artist Petra von Kazinyan has now interpreted the theme in a socially critical way on canvas.
It is above all the portrayal of women that is trivialised beyond recognition and at the same time deformed. Instagram, which has long since advanced to become also a kind of dating app, not only is home to mega-influencers like the Kardashians but also resort to filters to trim faces, which are already trimmed (in real life) to radiate youth. But not only Kardashians, also "normal people" suddenly succumb to the youth craze, posting their pictures showing infantile rabbit ears.
It is this phenomena Petra von Kazinyan takes up in her series "The Filtered Self", which she recently showed to selected collectors at the Bucherer Salon - and also immediately sold out.
Petra von Kazinyan refers to the early painted wedding portraits from the 17th century that were part of courtly marriage transactions and here depicts, among others, the childlike Infanta Margarita Teresa as she was portrayed by Velasquez at the ages of three, five and eight-now in the permanent collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. She reinterpreted Tu Felix Austria and the role of portraiture at that time and places it in today's context, where we tend to stylise our portraits, aka selfies, in a childlike way, following a similar example, and present them to an audience that is also often male.
History, however, is not only quoted pictorially here. For example, she brings in Kafka, who exactly one hundred years ago wrote in an exchange of letters to his friend Gustav Janouch: "The narrative element of animals is an expression of the desire for nature."
With the decline of private space and the advent of omnipresent digitalisation, which exposes our bodies down to the last pixel, we are defined and evaluated only by algorithms. In this way, von Kazinyan creates a successful discourse on media delusion, exaggerated self-representation and the distortion of one's own self, which she also shows in her mirrors with the rabbit ears. Which, appropriately, is also often used by exhibition visitors as a selfie backdrop.
The show was only on view for a hand-picked audience at Bucherer Salon on Vienna's Graben, more works can be discovered on Artsy, at Common Sense Gallery.
About the artist
Born in Germany, Petra von Kazinyan is based in Vienna and Germany. The philosophy graduate and artist's artwork have been shown in numerous exhibitions and art fairs in Austria and abroad. Most recently during the Venice Biennale 2022 as well as 2019, the Woman Art Award 2017 in Paris, Art Austria 2016 and Art Beijing 2012.
