"When we define the Potograph as a motionless image, this does not mean only that the figures it represents do not move; it means that they do not emerge, do not leave: they are anesthetized and fastened down, like butterflies"-Roland Bathes, Camera Lucida, 1980.

Born in 1971 in Sweden, Kira Wager produces painted reconstructions of photographs and memories. She frequently uses family photos for her motifs, but her most recent works show urban scenes with graffiti. The pictorial surface in her works is characteristically divided into a grid and painted on thin PVC with an alternate use of brushes and spatulas. Traditionally, the grid has been used as a technical aid when transposing pictures, but for Wager it also represents a technique that enables her vary her own expressions on the same painting giving the work an inner dynamic and creating intriguing shifts in the perception of the image. She uses the logic of the grid to show the differences between photography and painting. The degree of distinction depends on the distance from which the pictures are viewed. The further away, the more photographic, the closer, the more painterly.

______________________________________

Kira Wager
Idungatan 2008,
Oil on PVC,
110,5 x 150 cm

Biography >>>