Arina Essipowitsch

With Arina Essipowitsch, photography is never approached independently from the medium it is seen through. Beyond the image, the artist strives to consider forms as much as she does the way in which her images are shown in space. For her, it is a matter of considering the malleability of the photographs and their perpetual mobility. Consequently, her works are more often than not developed as volumes or installations that can also be brought to life during performances. Fold, Palimpseste or Soft Focus (in collaboration with the choreographer Eva Borrmann), for instance, concern themselves with the cuts and folds of two large-format images laid out in full on the ground. Arina Essipowitsch’s work plays with scale and modulations, as well as the relations between front and back and between bodies in space… The image is often incomplete, always blown up to the point that the subject disappears. The artist treats skin like landscapes and landscapes like abstractions and textures. Lately, in her efforts to contextualise her work within real space, Arina Essipowitsch has worked with a perfumer to include scent in her installation – a new way to affirm the necessity to experience art in its sensory dimension.