Introduction by Serge Fauchereau
Our everyday lives are surrounded, hemmed in, enclosed and imprisoned from morning to night by photographic images that shape even our dreams – this mouthwatering food product, that fashionable garment, this moving scene soliciting our help against poverty, this still from the latest must-see blockbuster, a flattering portrait of some celebrity or politician – clichés, clichés, clichés. And newspapers: scenes of catastrophe or war, the face of a criminal or footballer – clichés and more clichés. We look, we are interested for a moment, but we know it’s all about selling us a product, that the film will be inane and that by next month we will have forgotten the name of this hour’s hot prospect. As for the photos of war, poverty or disaster, they are only cold pieces of information; ultimately, we are not much moved. It’s just one or two images more.
One cannot blame a technique if the handsome portrait taken at the most opportune moment, clear and judiciously framed, turns out to be banal in reality, and even unpleasant when movement is added. The sanctified faces of Rimbaud, of Che Guevara, of Marilyn Monroe – clichés, clichés. They can be retouched at will. With only a few technical manipulations I can be turned into a magnificent, appealing figure of a man with handsome black eyes.
Just as easel painting is a cousin of house painting, so art photography is akin to the photography of posters and newspapers – and sometimes stems directly from it. Like painting, photography is accessible to all. Nowadays, a Charnay would no longer need to lug along sixty kilos of equipment to photograph the temples in Yucatan. Today, the thousands of tourists who travel there with small cameras weighing just a few grams can take dozens of photographs per minute, so much so that they forget to actually look at the temples. Have television, cinema and industrial photography taught them to look more perceptively through a small rectangular window?
Those who make photography an art know all this and, with even greater ease than painters, they play with formats, cropping, enlargement of details, blurring, overprinting, solarisation and who knows what else. Even when mediocre, and whether it shows a face or an abandoned hangar, a photograph measuring three metres by four has impact by virtue of its size, especially if it is artfully displayed. And if sensitive paper is still the most common support, we know now that every other kind is possible. An isolated detail, whether a pigeon’s eye or fireman’s helmet, focuses the attention and makes that detail intriguing and perhaps fascinating. Even amateurs know this, but the more widely accessible a technique, the greater one’s merit in doing something unique with it.
Surrounded by all these clichés, we should be grateful to those who free us from them and wash our eyes of an everyday reality that we could experience without so many photographs. I love those who show reality in another way (Blossfeldt, Weston, Alvarez Bravo), those who see behind the real (Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy, Ubac), those who deconstruct photos (Heartfield, Klucis, Lissitzky), and even those who play skilfully on our feelings (Capa, Dorothea Lange, Doisneau)… And if we wish to look beyond this heritage, well, there are also some very fine photographers around today. One such is Gabriela Morawetz.
While she retains the option of various techniques, the best possible modes of presentation (why go without if one feels the need to use one or the other?), we can see that Gabriela Morawetz is wary of certain methods used in contemporary photography. She does not seek to impress by ostentatious means such as large formats or light boxes, or with alluring colours. Not for her constructivist framings that impose a monumental feel on the subject. When her photographs are brought together in an installation, it is done in a conventional way, like old- fashioned photos on a grandmother’s mantelpiece, with lots of small frames and, behind them, a tall photograph, like a big mirror, or like an altar to one’s dearest loved ones and memories. The colour is as sparing as the staging is simple. Gabriela Morawetz is so little concerned to impress with format that she has taken to using those small portable diptychs that can be slipped into one’s pocket. But the discretion of the presentation should not be thought to indicate that the process is easy.
With Gabriela Morawetz, the subject is frontal: by that I mean that it stands there in front of us, whether a face, a sleeper, a copse, rumpled linen or an unidentified object. It changes only if we ourselves change position: features then become distorted, smoke shifts.
Ordinary photography, even if printed on a T-shirt or a car, has only two dimensions, and that does not satisfy this artist who wants it to have at least three. To obtain depth, she has those altar-like installations already mentioned, but also those convex double images from which we seem to be watched us as if through a porthole or a bull’s eye. Other, more complex objects comprise superimposed prints on two layers kept slightly apart from each other, producing effects of filtered light in which the subject seems to move slightly.
Morawetz likes to endow the objects she creates with a fragile appearance or aspect, which in fact is perfectly imaginary, for fragility is inherent in many art objects, and the risk of scratching, breaking or deterioration is no greater here than with painting, collage or some other conventional work.
Unlike works that aim for immediacy of emotion – the weird figures photographed by Diane Arbus, the monsters staged by J.P. Witkin –, Morawetz’s photographs have a slower, more subtle and lasting effect on the beholder. There is nothing remarkable about these women and men, apart from their greater or lesser nudity as sleepers wrapped in their dreams. We have already noted that the objects are extremely banal: a bed, branches, glass bubbles, a shoemaker’s lasts, string – all everyday things that appear in dreams. Thanks to the multiple processes to which she subjects the photographs that come together in a given composition, Morawetz seems to be trying to capture the aura of the banal.
About the people who appear in the photographs, we know nothing. There is no sign to suggest anything about their social life, their milieu, their job, or their aspirations. The place is neutral, the period indeterminate. These are sleepers in their beds and in their dreams. They are lying stretched out peacefully or in a foetal position in a bare environment, or, if more tormented, rubbing their faces, writhing, getting tangled up in their sheets or sleepwalking and escaping in their dreams.
As to what they are dreaming about, all we get to know are isolated elements whose reason for being there is left to our imagination: stones, trees, bits of string and the bed itself, which for some inexplicable reason fills up with transparent bubbles or starts emitting smoke. Nothing very spectacular, quite unlike the oneiric world of the Surrealists which is often too far out of the ordinary to be truly disturbing (giraffes on fire, women’s bodies with drawers, soft watches by Salvador Dalí, become clichés once we are over the surprise).
In this instance what more readily come to mind are the photographic documents in the old books by Camille Flammarion or amateur spiritualists and devotees of other occult manifestations, showing the levitation of the sleeping medium, or the materialisation of magnetic fluids or the dead, all of which are « proved » by photographs of some astral body or of the face of some distant ancestor imprinted in plaster. With Morawetz we do effectively see smoke and light manifesting an unknown something, uncertain objects, and the shape of a human head cast in a pillow. For me this is not about magic or transcendence but the world of our dreams, with its own images and a logic that is incomprehensible to the waking mind. We hide our faces, rub our eyes and look out through our fingers. Too late – we’re not asleep any more, we’re not flying any more, we’re no longer clambering up transparent bubbles, there are no more trees in front of us, no more unexpected objects at the foot of the bed.
People often talk in their dreams. Some sleepers speak and cry out, and not necessarily in fear, and they do so particularly in the world of Gabriela Morawetz, which is disturbing but not nightmarish. On waking there remain snatches of words spoken or heard or confused memories of blurred discourses. This is exactly what the artist brings us with these texts that appear, are seen through or disappear in these photographic works. One would like to believe that these written words, these palimpsests of dream, hold the meaning of what we can see. We attempt to decipher them, and out of the seeming hubbub we pick out the words secrets, sleep, instinct, pleasure, repeated several times over, and the connection and the analogies are self-evident where sleepers are concerned, but other words also come up, which have nothing to do with dreams : properties, heritage, vehicles, trial. Most disorienting. In fact, these passages are taken from a book found by the artist. Not any old book, mind you, but a manual of judicial astrology, and not from the Middle Ages but from the twentieth century. Magical thinking and rationality come together as they do in dreams : a precious pretext for an artist.
What I am suggesting here is only one approach. There are others. I am thinking in particular of the « sense of theatre » evoked by Juan Manuel Bonet on the occasion of Morawetz’s last exhibition. We may recall here that this artist comes from Krakow, the city that witnessed the work of Witkiewicz, Kantor and Hasior, three explorers of man’s dark, complex and strange inner theatre.
One could imagine a monodrama with a bed and a single actor in the middle of the stage. Michaux’s
Monsieur Plume would turn around and note that the ants have eaten a wall and Beckett’s Winnie would sink
a little deeper into the bedding as the recalled those happy days. It is, if you wish, a theatre,but you must
devise the plot, for this is a long way from a public theatre which, like cinema or video, needs the time
dimension, that is to say, an already-made story and the illusion of life in motion.
Whereas Morawetz’s works are moments of suspension, frozen moments of an action about which we know nothing more, eminently plastic scenes, rich with multiple, veiled meanings. The play is not simple, but it is up to us to act.
S．F．September 2008
Author: Born in 1939, in Rochefort-sur-Mer. After serving as professor of American Literature at the New York University and the University of Texas, Austin, became the commissioner of international exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He later served at such institutions as the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, the Kunsthalle in Bonn, the Tate Modern, Madrid’s Reina Sofía, and carried out an exhibition of Mexican art at the Museo de arte Moderno de Lille. He has published extensively on such modern artists as Georges Braque, Jean Art, and Piet Mondrian.
© Copyright Serge Fauchereau, shall not be reproduced in any form without permission.
情绪之回旋
塞尔日·福士若
我们的日常生活，包括梦境，都被影像所环绕、剪裁、封闭，甚至囚禁。从早到晚，那些诱人的食物，时尚的服饰，贫困中渴求帮助的动人场景，最新电影大片的经典瞬间，过度美化的名人或政治家的肖像⋯⋯一派的陈词滥调。而报纸呢，灾难或战争的现场，罪犯或足球运动员的面孔⋯⋯还是陈词滥调。我们无法停止观看，在某个瞬间也许会发生一点兴趣，但我们心里明白这只不过是商家在推销的另一个产品而已。那部电影的确够疯狂，不过等到下个月，没有人还会记得这一刻的热点。至于战乱，贫穷或者灾难的图片，它们只不过是几条冰冷的信息而已。在心底，我们已经很难被感动，无非是又多看见了一两张图片而已。
那些在最恰当的时刻，通过清晰而审慎地构图所拍摄的美丽肖像，在现实中其实很平庸，其言语和行为甚至还会有些令人不快，而这一切我们不能归罪于一种技术。神圣的兰波、格瓦拉、玛丽莲·梦露们的面孔⋯⋯等等的那些陈词滥调，他们可以被任意修饰。仅仅几下技术操作，我也可以被弄成一个充满吸引力的妙人儿，拥有一双英俊迫人的黑眼睛。
如同绘画与刷墙之间的表亲关系，艺术摄影与海报和新闻摄影也血脉相连，有时甚至直接源自后者。像绘画一样，摄影和一切相关。我们已经不再是查尔纳携带60公斤的器材拍摄尤卡坦半岛寺庙的时代。今天，成千上万的游客带着只有几克重的微型相机在一分钟之内拍摄数十张照片，如此一来，他们倒是忘了自己去观看寺庙。电视，电影，还有摄影，已经成功教会了人们从一个长方形的小窗口里观看，难道真的从那里才看得更好？
把摄影变作一门艺术的人都深谙此道，与画家相比，他们玩弄尺幅、裁剪、细节放大、朦胧、套印、中途曝光等等，随心所欲。谁知道还有什么新把戏。
即使是那些平凡的不能再平凡的一张面孔，或是一个废弃的棚子，如果打印成4米x 3米，单凭尺幅的效果就足以让人印象深刻，更不用说很艺术的被展示的时候。而感光纸只是最常见的基底，我们已然知道，任何材料皆有可能。孤立的细节，不论是鸽子的眼睛，或是消防员的头盔，都可以聚焦注意力让细节更有趣，甚至能引人入胜，连业余爱好者都知道这些。但是，能更广阔的进入一种技术，从而创造出某种独特，却是最杰出者的福祉。
被千篇一律的图片包围着的我们，真要感激那些洗刷了我们的眼睛，把我们从构成现实生活的、太多的、无味的影像中解放出来的人们。我热爱那些以另一种方式展示现实的人（博劳斯菲德、韦斯顿、阿尔瓦来兹·博拉沃）；那些从背后观看现实的人（曼·雷、莫奥利·纳吉、尤巴克）；那些肢解影像的人（哈特费徳，科鲁希斯，里斯塔斯基）；甚至那些巧妙地玩弄我们情感的人（卡帕、多荣缇朗日、杜瓦诺）⋯⋯如果我们希望寻找这些遗产之外的佼佼者，那么，当今也确有一些非常出色的摄影师，比如说卡别耶拉·莫拉维茨。
虽然她能够选择多种技术，更佳的展现形式（如果感觉到需要为什么不呢？），但我们看到，莫拉维茨对于当代摄影中使用的某些方法持有谨慎的态度。她不追求浮夸的大尺幅或灯箱，或者使用诱人的颜色，也不以结构主义的构图方式强加不朽之感于拍摄主体。
当她的作品以装置的方式出现时，形式非常传统，像是老祖母壁炉台上的老照片，一个个放在小相框里，后面像一面镜子似的再放一张很大的照片；又像是某人为深爱之人或记忆而作的一个祭台。
莫拉维茨的作品，主体迎面而来：它就在我们面前，无论是一张脸、沉睡的人、一棵树、揉皱的床单，或是一个不明物。只有当我们自己改变位置时，它才会改变：面貌变得扭曲，烟雾也飘移了。
普通的影像，即使被印制在T恤衫或汽车上，也只有两个维度。这不能满足莫拉维茨，这个艺术家想要至少三个维度。为了获得深度，她有那些前面提到的祭坛似的装置，还有凸起的双层图像，这些影像让我们仿佛透过舷窗或公牛的眼睛看着我们自己。另外，一种更为复杂的形式则包含被叠加打印在稍微有些分离的两层媒介上的主体，通过过滤的光影，看似在轻轻移动。
莫拉维茨喜欢赋予她创建的物体脆弱的外表或特质，但实际上这种脆弱性又是完全虚构的，因为不同于那些让人马上触景生情的作品—比如阿勃丝所拍摄的畸形人物、杰·皮·威肯所拍摄的舞台化怪物⋯⋯莫拉维茨的作品对观者产生一种更慢，更微妙和更持久的影响。这些女人和男人除去他们包裹在梦中的、或多或少裸露的身体，没什么特别之处。我们已经意识到拍摄主体异常平凡：床、树枝、玻璃气泡、鞋楦子、线绳⋯⋯出现在梦中的日用物品。感谢那些工艺让她能把这些影像集成在一个个天赐的构图中，莫拉维茨似乎是在尝试扑捉平庸的光环。
对于那些照片中的人们，我们一无所知。没有关于他们社交生活、环境、职业，或志向的任何提示。环境中性，时间不可知，他们是床和梦的眠者。他们或者平静的伸展着身体，或者在无所遮蔽之处蜷缩成婴儿，又或者被困扰着，揉搓着脸、扭曲着、纠缠着床单、梦游、从梦里逃脱。
他们梦见什么，我们所能知道的是些孤立的元素，它们存在的理由，留给我们去想像：石头，树木，一段段线绳和床榻，出于某种无法解释的原因而充满透明气泡，或开始升起烟雾。没有什么非常之处，不同于超现实主义者的梦幻世界，它们往往因为远远超出普通世界而不会造成真的困扰（着火的长颈鹿带有抽屉的女人体、萨尔瓦多·达利柔软的手表、在我们过度惊喜后、都已成为老生常谈）。
她的作品，更容易使人欣然联想到弗拉马雍的那些老书，或是某个招魂术爱好者以及其它玄学信奉者们所留下的图片资料：沉睡灵媒的漂浮显现，磁性流体或逝者的显灵。莫拉维茨通过显影生命之灵体或把遥远先祖的脸庞拓印在石膏上，证明了这一切。她让我们的确看到了烟雾和光所呈现的不明之体，不确定之物，以及被铸于枕头之中的人头形状。对我来说，这不是魔术或超验，而是拥有自身影像和逻辑的梦境，清醒后的头脑难以理解。我们藏起脸庞，揉搓眼睛，透过手指缝隙观望—晚了—我们不再沉睡，不再飞翔，不再爬上透明气泡，面前也不再有树木，床脚也再找不到意外之物。
人们常在梦中呓语，有些人大声说话，甚至高喊，那不总是因为恐惧。他们也许并不存在于莫拉维茨令人不安，却并非梦魇的世界。醒来后，那些说出的，听到的词语，或是模糊对话的矛盾记忆仍在抓取。这正是艺术家在照片中用那些曾经出现，被遥遥看见，又消失的文字所传达的感受。我们很愿意相信这些文字，这些梦的羊皮纸卷，承载着“见”的意义。我们尝试着解读，在喧闹中拣选出文字的秘密、眠、直觉、愉悦，再重复若干次，于是在眠者看来关联和类比已自我举证，然而还有其它的文字，和梦境毫不相关的文字：财物、遗产、车辆、审判，令人迷惑。其实它们来源于艺术家找到的一本书，需要提醒你的是，并非中古时期的古书，而是一本二十世纪出版的占星术工具书。这本书中魔法与合理性也像梦境一样结合，一个艺术家所能拥有的宝贵借口。
我在这里建议的解读只是其中之一，还应有其它方法。在此我特别想到的是胡安·曼努埃尔·博内特在莫拉维茨上一次展览上曾经提出的“戏剧之感”。我们应该知道这位艺术家来自克拉科夫，这座城市曾见证了维特·维奇、坎特和哈希尔的作品，他们三位都是人类黑暗、复杂、怪异“内心剧院”的探索者 。
可以想像一台独角戏，舞台中央的一张床和唯一一位演员。亨利·米肖的“普鲁莫先生”转过身来评论道：蚂蚁已经吃了一座墙。而贝克特的温妮在回忆那些快乐时光时，更深地陷入被褥里。这是一出戏，如果你愿意的话，情节将由你来创造。因为它和电影或录像这类公众戏剧相距太远，后者需要时间维度，也就是说一个既定的故事和对于生活的一段幻觉。
莫拉维茨的作品却是一些被延展的时刻，一个被停滞的不可知行动的瞬间；超级假想的场景，携带着多层而隐晦的含义。这出戏并不简单，将如何上演要靠我们自己演绎。
塞尔日·福士若
1939年出生于法国罗什福尔临海市。在纽约大学及奥斯汀得克萨斯大学任美国文学教授之后，成为巴黎蓬皮杜中心国际策展人。他后来继续在其它机构策展，包括威尼斯格拉西宫，波恩艺术馆，伦敦泰特现代美术馆等。另外，还曾发表了多部有关现代艺术家的书籍，包括乔治·布拉克，让·阿特和皮尔特·蒙德里安。
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