Manfred Krautschneider

 Although a child migrant from Austria, Manfred’s secondary and tertiary education was entirely in Victoria, Australia. He worked as a science academic while broadening his interests in visual art via formal and informal studies. In the last 20 years he has exhibited contemporary photographic art and painting nationally, in a total of 20 solo exhibitions (including 3 public Regional Galleries), participated in 11 group exhibitions, and has been a finalist in more than 10 National Art Prizes. The Suburban Reflections series began when I noticed modern art motifs in the streetscapes reflected on imperfect surfaces. On the border between recognition and abstraction, these photographs transform contemporary street life into transcendent images. They also modify and fragment space, hinting at our own insubstantiality, and allowing a psycho-social reading, conjuring up fears of conflict and loss. BA, MSc, PhD, (Monash University), Dip Vis Art (Box Hill Institute)

These works observe reality as seen in reflection, from outside, or tangentially, in order to acquire something essential andsurprising about the subject. To this end, I have photographed the streetscape as reflected on imperfect surfaces. In them, themultiple reflections and transmission on and through windows, awnings, water etc, produce smears of emotion and beautiful dramas. Instead of concrete mementos, I prefer the subtle mnemonics of these more ambiguous images, allowing deepassociations to emerge over time. Thus hese abstracts become loaded with psychological triggers that project them into thesurreal.

 Being a painter, photographer and new media artist, I respond strongly to the fluidity of space and light that characterize thisseries. One could easily mistake these usually unmodified photographs for modern or contemporary paintings, and I’ve leanttoward ever more abstract reflections that still manage to conjure up diverse feelings, including a sense of isolation andpremonitions of conflict and destruction.  In them we inhabit a messy threshold between past and future as memory andanticipation jostle for primacy. I hope that, like me, you find their content exciting and unsettling.

 Successfully holding the border between recognition and abstraction, my surreal photographs transform suburban streetscapesinto transcendent images.

 This project began when I first captured well-known modern and contemporary art motifs in my photos of the reflectedstreetscape. I have now exhibited a number of such series in more than 20 solo shows over 18 years. They have been chosen asfinalists in more than 12 national art prizes.

 Our modern flat glass results from the “floating glass process” which was only invented in the 1950’s. The further we go back intime, the more distorted reflections on glass would have been. This led me to believe that some modernism, including surrealismand even cubism may have been inspired by direct observation, of reflections, and the superimpositions seen on and throughglass. That’s why I have been documenting such reflections for more than a decade now.  These studies have been shownwidely because of their relationship to modern and contemporary art.

Copyright2020, ManfredKrautschneider

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