CONVERSION OF TIME

Conversion of Time focuses on a series of recent projects (2010 – 2012) including Density Drawings, Parallel Planes and Time Passing Objects. The works intend to document areas in which the analogue medium of photography manages to record what invisible to the human eye.

In Density Drawings Mater constructs an image inside the camera by layering multiple moments in time during the making of a drawing (multiple exposures). The drawing progresses and eventually disappears to result in a monochrome. The result is a cross-exchange of visual information between mark on paper and film in the camera.

In Parallel Plains Mater extends her working method and offers several ways of looking at a single moment in time, capturing parallel images on different negatives while drawing.

Also Time Passing Objects works with the principles of converting space and time, yet introduces a sculptural element to the process by painting on paper objects while registering the collapse of the structures under the weight of the applied paint. Photographed against black backgrounds, they appear to float in space on the border between object and flat abstraction.

Density Drawings, Parallel Planes and Time Passing Objects are complemented by a site-specific installation.

Shown together for the first time, Katja Mater’s works explore themes such as the experience of time in photography and the documentation of moments and situations with intangible characteristics. Mater engages in a non-traditional use of camera equipment, providing a new perspective on photography as a creating rather than a documenting medium.

Katja Mater (b 1979, lives and works in Amsterdam) studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam and De Ateliers, Amsterdam. Recent solo exhibitions include Density Drawings, Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam (2010) and Principle Matter, V&A, New York (2008). Recent group exhibitions include Resonance and Repetition, EFA Project Space, New York (2012), Autumn of Modernism I and II, at the Vleeshal, Middelburg and the Temporary Gallery, Cologne (both 2012), Maybe it’s the light that has to change and not much else, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2012), Un Paisaje Holandés, La Casa Encendida, Madrid SP (2012), Les Marques Aveugles, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2011), Time and Time again, Walden Affairs, The Hague (2011) and Photography in Reverse, FOAM Photography Museum, Amsterdam (2009).

Mater is currently working on a publication that will include the work shown in the exhibition, to be published by ROMA Publications, Amsterdam in 2013.

Katja Mater is represented by Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam.