sine qua non
Mara Koschar
STAGES

With STAGES, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark has created a format that gives young and emerging artists from Graz and Styria a space to present their work. Originally developed as a full-length program, the format has now been expanded: the stage, on which young local artists initially presented their work for one evening, is usually enriched with a compact exhibition over several days, in order to give a larger audience the opportunity to see and discover the positions on display. STAGES thus serves as a regular offering and as an open field for innovative approaches, artistic experimentation, and critical debate.

Photographer Mara Koschar (*1998 Graz, lives in Graz) deals with the conditions of the photographic medium and thus with the tension between photographer, motif, and image. The focus is on the question of how found motifs behave in the image through photographic design.

sine  qua non – without which” – is an indispensable prerequisite. By crossing out sine, this absolute must is reduced to absurdity. The work deals with the question of what actually constitutes photography. The starting point is the conscious staging of motifs that are removed from their original context. This creates a visual world in which the focus is not on what is depicted, but on surfaces, light, colors, and structures. The photographer explores different creative approaches and explores the possibilities of the camera as an image-forming tool. In large-format prints, images become physically tangible and give digital photography a material presence.

Similar to Eva Ursprung, analog and digital are intertwined in such a way that it is no longer possible to resolve the two supposed entities, thus reconstructing and anticipating our reality in such a way that these supposed different spaces are seen as one.