EXHIBITION PULSATIONS FROM CATHERINE GFELLER AT GALERIE SPRINGER
BERLIN, Fasenen Strasse 13, Berlin
Interview from Nathalie Volcouve
Constantly in movement between her photo camera and her video camera, worldwide renown artist Catherine Gfeller is having her first-but not last- exhibition. I had the pleasure to meet her for POSI+TIVE MAGAZINE
1) When did you start to shoot? In which circumstances?
After my bachelor, in 1985, I travelled to California and this is how it all begun: the discovery of vast landscapes, golden hills, colored desert, undulating highways inoculated in me the passion of photography. I understood it was my way to respond to the outside world and to express all the physical and mental sensations it provides.
Then NY in the nineties brought my work to another level: the switch from natural landscapes to urban landscapes.
Paris in 2000 wrapped me back into my native language and enabled me to do more experimental works combining photography, video, sound, installations.
2) As a multidimensional artist how would you describe your artistic obsession?
My quest is to capture pulsations of our sensations, the pulses of our perceptions
Different tools, a photography camera, a video camera, microphones, paper and a pencil enable me to record still and moving images, thoughts, words, sentences, voices, sounds of life…
3) Each of your image/composition/video lead us towards meditation..What kind of philosophical message would you like us to receive from your work?
In the middle of urban chaos, we can find our true rhythm, our own pace – in the physical and spiritual sense.
In other words: how saturation can become meditation ? This is what I am after.
All these back and forth between the outside and the inside world finally lead you into an inner peace.
4) If you had unlimited budget and space what would be your dream-project?
Wow I love this question.
I’d like to install in big cities (like Berlin or New York) huge panels on a very large scale of pictures and sentences. I would create a “parcours” in the whole city.
Instead of indicating actual directions they would hint at inner thoughts as if they were whispering secrets to the inhabitants.
They would transform the city into an intimate being.
5) As POSI+TIVE MAGAZINE would like to follow your work, what is your next project?
I am invited next september to do a workshop Johannesburg…
I will do a workshop at the Wits Art school and then a new work in the city of Johanesburg which will then be exhibited the following year at the Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg
It is already very inspiring to me….
