Werner Kaligofsky. Verkehrsflächen | Trafficways

Werner Kaligofsky’s subtle and insistent photographic investigations undertake a deconstruction and simultaneous reconstruction of stories that function through pictures. On the one hand, he uses specifically selected photographic and filmic material, which he processes and prepares through a variety of steps, to track down the hidden, sometimes also unconscious politics of this visual management. On the other hand, Kaligofsky deals with facts, historical material, for which he first creates the pictures, for example, photos of certain streets in a city, to then demonstrate that they remain inexpressive without knowledge of the context from which they have been collected. Belonging in this category, is a work such as Verkehrsflächen 2, which does not even require a photo, but instead comprises intervening in a common rural picture of a village by temporarily transforming the names on the street signs.

Methodologically, both approaches are located at the same level; as Reinhard Braun established, the “(supposed) concept of the (photographic) image as a public and collective document: as a visual nexus for the construction of publicness and history.”  Kaligofsky investigates this critically. All his works aim at “[making] us aware of the problems inherent in the way this perceptive process functions” (Monika Faber). It is first through the process of recognition, which Kaligofsky sets in motion, that the political dimensions which capture his interest become visible. 

The present catalogue offers precise insights into Werner Kaligofsky’s works. The essays from Reinhard Braun and Monika Faber situate them in a media and art theoretical context. Galerie Fotohof, whose press is publishing the catalogue, and Galerie im Taxispalais, have presented most of the depicted works in exhibitions in 2002 and 2001. Several of the newer works arose in the context of “Public Art Lower Austria.“

Silvia Eiblmayr/Rainer Iglar/Michael Mauracher