Diarikom : Magdalena Pfeifer

Sunday, 2 February 2014

Magdalena Pfeifer

Magdalena Pfeifer by Nigel A JAMES

listen to ‘Magdalena Pfeifer - Not Stopping at Red! Listen to this Article’ on Audioboo

In one of her works, The artist Magdalena Pfeifer shows the future as how it is not normally seen. In her picture is a car at the traffic lights. The driver has a choice. He can either go straight ahead or turn left for the future. This is not our conventional way of our thinking! When we think of tomorrow, we see that which is in front of us as where we are going. We have neither right nor left. But, for Magdalena it is different! Her ways are her ways!

And the ways she has taken to where she is now have not only been the paths of pattern, design and textiles, but fine and visual arts, too. And, the one thing that they all have in common is involvement. And, sometimes in ways that both shock and surprise.

In one of her videos, Magdalena very successfully draws the audience into a discussion between a father and son as they are driving over a seemingly never ending bridge, and then, just as everyone is expecting a certain conventional end, the film takes an unexpected turn and ends in tears and disaster! Again, not straight on! But Magdalena's latest project is anything other than disaster. And, in order to join in with the fun, one has to know how to count.

It is Painting by Numbers and it's great. It not only brings many of her talents together, but fully involves guests and good friends as well. After hanging a huge canvass on the wall, she then proceeds to project one of her videos onto it. The audience then calls out a number, and Magdalena then applies the corresponding colour to the ever changing picture on the canvass. What follows is spontaneous creativity and its results can only be described as being unlike anything else that has ever been done before! Again a new direction! And all in her studio which is in the heart of Ottakring which Vienna's up and coming new creative centre. And this, too, is a new direction for a district which was, until fairly recently, industry pure.

And, where is Magdalena going next? This is simple. She will be turning left when it is right to do so; she will be going straight ahead when the going is clear; and, she will be turning right when there's nothing else left! And, of course, there is one thing that's perfectly clear, she will not be stopping at red! Signals are not part of her life!