Junger Ankauf

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Katja Novitskova - Approximation (shoebill) und Growth Potential (SALTS)

2015

Katja Novitskova was born in Tallinn, Estonia in 1984. After completing her bachelor‘s degree in Semiotics and Cultural Studies at the University of Tartu, she went on to complete her Master of Science in Digital Media at the University of Lübeck. For her artworks, Novitskova makes use of a broad repertoire of organic and technical materials, including rubber, aluminium, photographs and even insects. Here themes revolve around modern phenomena related to the Internet and science. She thus restages, for example, the channels of production and reception of images in social networks. On the whole, Novitskova’s work can be described as post-Internet art.

Katja Novitskova: Approximation (shoebill), 2014 © Courtesy the artist and Galerie Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, Photo: Jürgen Schulzki
Katja Novitskova: Growth Potential (SALTS), 2014 © Courtesy the artist and Galerie Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, Photo: Jürgen Schulzki

Approximation (shoebill), 2014
The work Approximation (shoebill) presents a larger-than-life reproduction of a shoebill, an African bird species, as a cut-out in the form of a digital print on aluminium. Novitskova has already technically reproduced a large number of such visual ready-mades from the Internet and presented these in gallery spaces. They are then photographed once again and uploaded onto the Internet. The fact that she often selects ‘cute’ examples from the animal kingdom has little to do with the creatures themselves. It is much more a result of the fact that the motifs are among the most widely spread visual materials on the Internet. The artist is especially interested in depicting the dynamic, independent existence of her reproductions – they are continuously posted, linked and shared on social networks until their provenance is no longer traceable.

Growth Potential (SALTS), 2014
Growth Potential (SALTS), an arrow made of urethane rubber, is not a unique piece within the artist’s oeuvre. Optimistically upwardly striving arrowheads made of acrylic glass or rubber seem to literally surround Katja Novitskova’s Approximations. The arrows, which are reminiscent of budget curves, refer to the flood of images on the Internet and also raise the question as to the economic potential of things, beings and images. The flies cast in the work are reminiscent of insects captured in amber and, as prehistoric eye-witnesses, are evidence of the fact that they have not survived the journey from the real world into the virtual world. The artist directs the viewer’s attention toward the materiality of the media and data streams and their active role in the definition of the world, which we perceive as reality.

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