Exhibition Surfaces expands on the central theme of the Riga Photography Biennale 2022 – isolation, and offers viewers the opportunity to study the development of informative image coding. The application of the exhibition explains that the photos are usually viewed as transparent. It is assumed that the photograph does not look at the surface of the image, but looks through it, focusing on the scene that the image reveals. This transparency, attributed to the photographic image, serves a variety of purposes, allowing the media to serve as the general language of today’s communication.
However, photography cannot exist without physical form. Since 2021 at work Surfaces Lithuanian artist-researcher Paulius Petraitis pays more attention to the appearance of photography. Images are displayed as distorted when the screen and print material are emphasized. Using individual shots and elements from the films as a basis, Petraitis re-photographs them, supplementing them with several layers of analog and digital interference. Anything – a hand gesture, a car lamp or rubber boots – is removed from the continuity of the original environment and transformed into an image with new possibilities for interpretation. Despite the visible transformations, all the images are intertwined in an imaginary narrative, which gives the impression of a cosmic story.
–
