Verena Guther

Texts

Urban Syntax
Thirty years ago Henri Lefebvre had already spoken of a “completely urbanized society”; at that time a hypothesis, today hardly a topic of controversy. Meanwhile most people live in cities and even rural areas cannot exist without being closely associated with major urban centers. However what constitutes today’s cities? How can one capture in an image their atmosphere, their colors, their shapes or even the particular rhythm and heartbeat of mega cities like New York and Rio de Janeiro? How can their antithetical patterns of order, superimpositions and ruptures in their built structures be made comprehensible and tangible?

Verena Guther brings our attention to such questions with a clear and sensible insight for details. In her works the respectively independent aspects of a modern metropolis are peeled off. The fotographical and cinematographical materials and recollections gathered during her work sojourn in urban centers has been integrated into lucid pictorial compositions. To begin with we notice skyscrapers from New York. In these works the relationship between architecture and urban space is brought into balance. It is of no surprise therefore that the guiding principle behind the New York series makes use of rigorous vertical formats. The artist arranges the single photographs, revealing houses as far as the eye could see, one underneath the other. One recognizes the Chrysler building. It makes its approach through a series of photographical sections enabling us to closely observe the salient characteristics of its construction, its radiating fan and gleaming metal surface of the pinnacle. Painted works have been blended in by the artist between these photographic sections and digitally treated to produce a composition. Intensive bands of color interrupt the inherent illusion in photograhy’s space. On the other hand alliances between photography and painting are indicated. For example a skyscraper antenna continues into the painted band or one discovers, that the extended skyline of the financial district is in reality a painted texture.

In the Paris-series the verticals are a minority and the architecture becomes a background for urban street life. Fashion and lifestyle are here the object of interest and of course Paris is the city that emits the strongest impulses when it comes to haute couture, perfume and jewelry. Huge and alluring advertising bill boards, that powerfully place their stamp on the street’s image are nowhere else so manifest as in Paris. In Rio and especially in Brasilia it is the architectural form that is being focused on again. Brasilia is a city designed on the drawing table. Its superstructure is composed of generous traffic arteries and clear functional zoning partitions. One recognises off hand the congressional buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer with their two huge hemispherical bowls and the twin high rises of the executive. What follows are details of buildings and their relationship to people. The people appear small and of secondary importance next to the smooth and immaculate surface of the architecture. Further on down, as if to lend some warmth and emotionality to the rational structures, painted textures of an earthy quality and a crowd of people that are gazing at two street performers and their acrobatic dance are integrated.

Whether Paris, New York, Brasilia or Rio, Guther is never interested in isolating the singularity of the place from its environment and seeing it in a theatrical context as is the case with the eye of the tourist. It is rather the distinctive character and spirit of a metropolis that one can sense through her system of signs and the structural qualities that she generates through her method of using the photographic medium. In ancient times structura meant the fitting together of stonework. Therefore it dealt in most part with the physics of building. In the 19th century, the term was applied in other domains, and following this, had come to mean the inner disposition of a system. That meant that it could be applied to a mathematical, physical or social framework. For the philosophical domain Wilhelm Dithey applied the term to psychology and understood it in this new framework as a condition of consciousness, through which a person can grasp the singular quality of his life without having to call upon the metaphysical sphere of the absolute. The next step in this development was bringing forth historical ‘types’ that could be observed, described and compared.

Relating the above to Verena Guther’s photographic works, one could say that structural analysis of urban types are being conducted. And in fact, although the rooftop landscape of Paris, with its skylights and chimney stone pots brings a market garden more to mind, the water tanks belong to Chelsea’s rooftops and one associates with them factory grounds and industry. It is selfunderstood that scraped surfaces and peeling layers of color belong to this shabby environment. She has found these qualities in her paintings, in her colors and haptic structures. She assembles selected pieces into her photographical works, because they emotionalize the rational urban system, attaching in this way a microscopic trace of life, to architecture’s technical nature.

Guther who studied experimental graphic arts under Helmut Lortz in Berlin, experienced how deep in this city historical ruptures have dug scars into the physical urban fabric. With the fall of the wall some scars have healed and disappeared but have reappeared again at another location. New York is like Berlin, a manifold ploud up field, with Ground Zero as the most well known example. But also Chelsea is transforming itself from an industrial location to a service sector quarter of the city, where restaurants, galleries and loft apartments are making their appearance. Guther traces all this and reports about it in her photographic assemblages. Her technically-objective analytical apparatus is above all the camera, although as a sign of her conciously subjective expression, she uses a manuscriptural gesture in her paintings. The painted sections display for the most part strong colors; radiant yellow, and vermilion for New York, blue for Paris and Brasilia. The brilliant color palette invigorates the more restrained colors of the digitally edited photographs. A closer look also reveals that the textures of the painted surfaces are add-ons and logical follow ups of the photos themselves. New York- that is, for the most part top views from the highest vantage points and front views that show street caverns with cars and innumerable yellow cabs. In continuing the rhythm of queued up cars as orange-red color dabs, Guther connects both perspectives through a painted fabric. These dabs carry on the insect like swarm of cars and buses as a figure and symbol. A photo series shows Ground Zero, the place where the Twin Towers had stood until 2001. Guther restrains from any emotional pathos, depicting the place as a scarred gap between buildings, where in the midst of huge heaps of sand, construction workers are paving the way into the depths.

Scaffolding and cranes also appear in some other pictures making a point of the permanent nature of change and transformation. The momentarily perceived character does not however necessarily enjoy universal validity. Every new era brings forth an abundance of new points of perception, making things conditional. Cities are portrayed by Guther as flexible structures, not uniform but rather heterogenic entities in motion, that have to be adjusted to new conditions. The physical space of the streets, houses, extensions and annexes is only relatively stable. Although more stable than the crowds to be seen passing by from time to time in these works, these spaces are not of indefinite duration. Verena Guther’s works, her analytical photographic eye, her strong and sensible paintings and the subtle blend of both are interpretations, that help us visualize the textures and structures of individual urban systems. Her interest is focused on the visual understanding of the living environment that is reflected by man’s self made urban structure.

Grit Weber 2005

English translation: Dipl. Ing. Vasilios Tsigaridis