The Artist as Journalist

When Katrin Plavcak presented herself last thursday at her lunchtalk, she chose to not simply sketch her artistic development or list recent projects, but traced the story of art serving as a kind of journalistic, work, depicting politically inconvenient truths and conditions.

Starting from the famous Gericault painting The Raft of Medusa that at the time of its creation greatly upset the public as well the ones in power, she touches upon our century with depictions of secret wars and hidden atrocities. Her we also get to see some of her own works, like a painting of Dinosaurs with heads of world leaders at the time it was painted, including former US president George W. Bush and Mahmud Ahmadinejad, sadly still iranian head of state. "They felt like dinosaurs to me, ruthlessly trampling the earth." she explains. Another painting she shows features a prominent chinese dissident behind a grid of red bars, an image that speaks for itself without putting a name to it. This painting was even featured in an exhibition during the time she spent in China. It remained untitled as to not attract to much of the wrong attention like the gallery owner feared it would and in the end Katrin left it in care of the gallery owner so lots more people could see it.

Asked what an image needs have to be a paintable subject, she says she's not sure herself. "I have a whole archive of images I select what interest me from." she explains, to go on: "I want it to portray something that would otherwise be too easily forgotten." It's in this vein of working that she also states she wouldn't want to paint Anders Breivik. This statement shows how Katrin Plavcak doesn't jump on some bandwagon of using political content to garner fame and fortune, but out of genuine concern and interest for topics she believes need to be reported and kept in the public mind.

But she's not only a painter, but also a singer, as she demonstrates by showing a video titled Orgon Rockthat features, in her words, "a frustrated female architect and speaking meteors traveling through space." Here another of her big interests crops up, space and our journey there. She shows a series of paintings featuring aliens barring the way to space for humans, maybe in a desperate attempt to save space from our stupidity. The age of crewed spaceflights is coming to an end now, it seems, so there's one less thing to worry about for Katrin. As there remain lots, though, we will without doubt see a lot more interesting paintings and videos from this artist.

For now, we can look forward to the presentation of works by her class this upcoming Friday at the open day at the Fortess Hohensalzburg that will be running from 2 to 6 pm. [mp]

http://plavcak.com