Fine Art: Photomanipulation (Professional) – Honorable Mention
Porcelain Love
The photographic series Porcelain Love (2014-16) explores the way well known movies (Brokeback Mountain, Gone with the wind, Eyes wide shut etc.) form the perception of love and sexuality in Western society. The photos are based on key scenes, that have inscribed themselves into our collective memory and remain anchored there – also when, or precisely because in their dramaturgical climax they can hardly be applied to our everyday reality. This irony I pick up by the transformation into photographic porcelain figurines, so the scenes oscillate between human and sculpture, desired image and cliché, mockery and fragility. Some scenes I re-enacted in different gender compositions, implying the diversity of modern relationships. The reduction to the naked body refers to the pre media iconography of idealized ancient Greece and Renaissance statues. Creating new realities is what interests me the most in photography. I love to stage scenes, to create sets, to work with actors and to design new visual existences in post-production. By exaggeration and play I may study social developments and interpersonal relationships in a larger aesthetic, poetic and provocative spectrum.
About author:
Rona Kobel is a German artist, living and working in Berlin. In her recent photographic and sculptural series, she explores the iconography of movies and news coverage. Therefore Kobel developed a distinct relationship between photography and porcelain, which is based on merging fast media and slow media, image and scultpure. Kobel is a graduate from the Berlin University of the Arts (Prof. Katharina Sieverding, Prof. Leiko Ikemura). In 2015, she received the Master class Prize of the President of the University (Meisterschülerpreis). Her work was shown in solo and group shows in Germany and abroad.