Grit Reiss Making Reality
published in EUROPEAN PHOTOGRAPHY, ART MAGAZIN, No. 114, 2023/2s
Autor: Freddy Langer
Grit Reiss has found a convincing pictorial metaphor for the fact that the expectations of the world can sometimes go over one’s head: She does without her head. Although she poses as a model in all of her works, she is not recognizable in any of them. Rather, her head disappears into the black hole of a wall, or into the floor, or wrapped tightly in cloth, or tucked into a strange funnel, like the kind you put around a dog’s neck to keep it from scratching or biting itself. Where she assumes the pose of Auguste Rodin’s Thinker, the head of a doll must serve as a substitute. The fact that she transforms the often bizarre scenes into believable moments through clever digital editing creates tension and irritation. None of her works is a depiction of reality, and even if Grit Reiss did indeed assume the sometimes twisted poses for a performance and performed them in an empty studio, they are not to be understood as documentation of body control. Nor do they have anything to do with female self-questioning; rather, the photographer sees them as a commentary on social developments. Her gestures may refer to news photographs, as in one image in which she holds a mannequin’s head to her chest, as she had seen in a news photograph of Ukrainian female soldiers clutching their steel helmets in a similar fashion. Or it’s a reaction to an experience in the New York subway when she couldn’t look any of the passengers in the face because they were all staring so intently at their cell phones that she thought they must be losing themselves, too. She says she uses her body, once a competitive athlete, as a means of expression – especially to articulate concerns.
Stipendium Kunstverein Bellevuesaal
DELTABEBEN 2020
Katalog zur Ausstellung insightOut im Wormser Kulturzentrum 2019
erhältlich im Worms Verlag
Katalog zur Meisterschülerausstellung shifted in der Kulturschmiede Wettig 2018
Grit Reiss 