Friedl vom Gröller, Paris +33 621 24 11 37
Film and Photographs

Succinct and enigmatic at the same time: Friedl vom Gröller’s short films radiate an irresistible attraction. Her work centers around the image of the human being. Is the camera merely a technical eye for recording segments of reality, or can it do much more? Do self-perception and self-presentation change with the awareness of recording, of reproducibility? Using the media of photography and film Friedl vom Gröller investigates the roles of the filmmaker and her models. The photographer Friedl Kubelka (* 1946 in London) goes by the name of Friedl vom Gröller as a film artist. In 1990 she founded the School for Artistic Photography in Vienna, of which she was the director until 2010. Today she is the director of the School of Independent Film, Vienna, which she also founded.

In her photographic and film work since the 1970s Kubelka = vom Gröller, meanwhile also trained in psychoanalysis, has focused on the portrait. In her films tying into the traditions of French auteur cinema and avant-garde film, vom Gröller simply asks the protagonists to look into the camera. The actors are people without acting training, often from the artist’s personal surroundings – family and friends. They face the camera like a mirror. The film apparatus records every emotion, every indication of a state of mind,

thus revealing the essence of the person filmed.

The exhibition in Lentos is one of the rare presentations of an oeuvre that already enjoys cult status. Eight short films are shown (including Graf Zokan / Franz West, 1969, Gutes Ende, 2010) and several photo series, including Nationalratsdebatte, 2002, as a portrait of the artist’s mother and several famous self-portraits from the early 1970s.

Curator: Brigitte Reutner