Roos van Haaften
LIGHT WORKS | Re-Risch-Lau
Photography

14 April to 17 July 2021
BTV Stadtforum Innsbruck
Eintritt frei
© Roos van Haaften
© Roos van Haaften
14 April to 17 July 2021
BTV Stadtforum Innsbruck
Eintritt frei

Forming a picture

The second sensation you get when looking at Roos van Haaften’s pictures is amazement. Amazement in the moment you realise that her magical light images are created solely from the shadow cast on the wall by meticulously arranged waste materials. With her alpine landscapes, the artist references the great romantic image while at the same time providing its making-of.

In her works, she addresses the illusion that photography creates: on the one hand, its ability to designate a concrete place at a specific time, its capacity to both inform and emotionally touch. On the other hand, her projections lead us inwards, to where all images originate. To our ability to imagine, to form a picture of something.

Light works, Re-Risch-Lau (2021)
© Roos van Haaften
Light works, Re-Risch-Lau (2021)
© Roos van Haaften

Holiday greetings from Tyrol and Vorarlberg

As part of the INN SITU series, photographers take a closer look at the Tyrol/Vorarlberg region. In this context, the Dutch artist discovered the postcards produced by the Risch-Lau publishing house. Founded by two female pioneers of portrait photography at the end of the 19th century, with locations in Bregenz, Innsbruck and Salzburg the company shaped the image of the Alpine mountain world in thousands and thousands of images until the 1980s. The estate of the female photographer dynasty with around 40,000 pictures is now in the Vorarlberg State Library. Roos van Haaften spent months recreating about a dozen of them.

Light works, Re-Risch-Lau (2021)
© Roos van Haaften
Light works, Re-Risch-Lau (2021)
© Roos van Haaften

Beauty incl. operating manual

Images of images. Visual reconstructions that cast shadowy images on the wall like a fading echo, an image from a dream just barely captured, the fading memory of the sublime peak, the quaint mountain village, the overwhelming rock face. Sculpture as an imaging process, as a school of seeing.

Roos van Haaften’s works seem to be descendants of Arte Povera, seeking to rebuild a sinking world through the reuse of the cheapest materials. Her exhibition is a chapel of contemplation and enlightenment. With luminous windows behind which we glimpse our own landscapes of the soul, while at the same time perceiving the artist’s mastery of craftsmanship and her transparent interplay with shadows. Beauty incl. operating manual.

Her work for INN SITU was newly created for the BTV Stadtforum and is the artist’s first exhibition in Austria.

Roos van Haaften

© Daan Alkemade

Born in 1983, lives and works in Amsterdam. The beginning of her artistic work was marked by an exploration of text and performance and a study of the so-called fourth wall, the creation of theatrical illusion through stage sets. She studied Visual Arts at the ArtEZ Academy of Art & Design in Arnhem as well as at the University of the Arts in London. Her light installations hover between the boundaries of sculpture, photography and drawing. In addition to her studio work, she designs site-specific projects in public spaces. In 2018, Roos van Haaften was nominated for the Fotomuseum Winterthur’s “Plat(t)form” of outstanding young artists. Most recently, her works have been shown at venues including the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, Garage Rotterdam or Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf.

David Bergmüller
LIGHT WORKS
Music

© Theresa Pewal
© Theresa Pewal

PHOTO SOUND

Musical improvisation and short guided tour

For a quick after-work stop: Admission free. Three pieces of music for three works in the exhibition. Plus a short introduction. Total duration: 30 minutes.

The tours take place on site in the BTV Stadtforum, registration is required. Please bring a negative COVID-19 test, a vaccination certificate or proof of recovery with you.

  • Wednesday, 14 July 2021, 6 to 6.30 p.m., BTV Stadtforum Innsbruck, registration required, the 3-G-rule applies

David Bergmüller

is one of the outstanding soloists for his instrument. The Tyrolean lute virtuoso studied with Hopkinson Smith at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and with Rolf Lislevand at the Musikhochschule Trossingen. He has performed with the Concentus Musicus Wien and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, among others, and played with prominent figures such as Maurice Steger, Alessandro De Marchi and Avi Avital. As a soloist, he won the “Franz Joseph Aumann” award at the H.I.F.  Biber Competition in St. Florian in 2017. He has been professor of lute at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne since 2018.

LIGHT WORKS
Dialogue

© photo4passion
© photo4passion

PHOTOSYNTHESIS – Dialogue Tours

Strolls through the exhibition, with exciting outside views. Prominent figures from science and everyday culture in conversation with INN SITU’s artistic director Hans-Joachim Gögl.

The guided tours take place on-site (BTV Stadtforum Innsbruck). Please bring a negative COVID-19 test, a COVID-19-vaccination confirmation or a COVID-19 recovery confirmation.

Film  and guided tour of the exhibition by the artist

For the finale of this INN SITU spotlight: A documentary about the Pitztal photo pioneer Anna Katharina Lentsch. Prior to this, an exchange with Roos van Haaften at the exhibition (guided tour in English, film and discussion in German).

Wednesday, 7 July 2021, 5 p.m.

The tour with the artist Roos van Haaften begins at 5 p.m., and the film  takes place at around 6 p.m.

The photography pioneer Anna Katharina Lentsch (far right) with her four daughters Maria, Berta, Pauline and Ida (from left) and her sons-in-law Gustav Bregenzer and Wilhelm Lau, the co-founder of the Risch-Lau company.
© Private property

Photo, BU: The photography pioneer Anna Katharina Lentsch (far right) with her four daughters Maria, Berta, Pauline and Ida (from left) and her sons-in-law Gustav Bregenzer and Wilhelm Lau, the co-founder of the Risch-Lau company. © Private property

Film documentary: Dichtel’s Drina – a search for traces

A spectacular women’s story: The picture postcard company Risch-Lau, whose images Roos van Haaften explores in the exhibition, has its roots in the Tyrolean Pitztal valley. Leaving the village of Wenns behind, a certain Anna Katharina Lentsch set off in the middle of the 19th century and opened a successful photo studio in Sigmaringen (Baden-Württemberg) a few years later. With her help, her daughter Ida then laid the foundation of the Risch-Lau company in Bregenz, which was to shape the image of the region in a very special way for over 100 years. Anna Katharina’s great-great-grandson Markus Barnay set out in search of any traces of this extraordinary Tyrolean entrepreneur. He will be available for a discussion afterwards.

The guided tour takes place on-site (BTV Stadtforum Innsbruck). Please bring a negative COVID-19 test, a COVID-19-vaccination confirmation or a COVID-19 recovery confirmation.

Past events:

Guided dialogue tour with Martina Baleva, art historian

Wednesday, 30 June 2021, 6 to 7 p.m.

© Martina Beleva

Martina Baleva has been a professor of art history with a focus on recent art history at the University of Innsbruck since 2019. Previously, she held an FAG Foundation Assistant Professorship for Cultural Topographies of Eastern Europe at the University of Basel. Her main research areas include the history of art and images in Eastern Europe as well as the history and theory of photography.

The guided tour takes place on-site (BTV Stadtforum Innsbruck). Please bring a negative COVID-19 test, a COVID-19-vaccination confirmation or a COVID-19 recovery confirmation.

Guided dialogue tour with Thomas Feurstein, librarian

Wednesday, 2 June 2021, 6 to 7 p.m. – FULLY BOOKED

© Thomas Feurstein

Thomas Feurstein maintains the archive of the Risch-Lau company in the Vorarlberg State Library with its tens of thousands of postcards and photographs, which inspired the works of Roos van Haaften’s exhibition. He studied geography and German in Innsbruck and did a training as a librarian in Zurich. Since 1989 he has been working in Bregenz and has been building a regional image database in the state library for several years.

The guided tour takes place on-site (BTV Stadtforum Innsbruck). Please bring a negative COVID-19 test, a COVID-19-vaccination confirmation or a COVID-19 recovery confirmation.

Guided dialogue tour with Martina Baleva, art historian

Digital guided dialogue tour with Markus Barnay, great-grandson of Ida Risch.

Wednesday, 12th of May 2021, 6 to 7 p.m. on Youtube

Pictured with his father Beato Barnay, the last managing director of the Risch-Lau postcard publishing house.
© Markus Barnay

Markus Barnay is the great-grandson of Ida Risch, née Back, who in 1885 – together with her husband Wilhelm Lau – opened the photo studio in Bregenz that later became the Atelier Risch-Lau and eventually one of the best-known picture postcard publishers in western Austria. Pictures from the Risch-Lau archive serve as models for Roos van Haaften’s works.

Markus Barnay is an editor in the Current Affairs Department at ORF Vorarlberg. He is the creator of TV documentaries on various aspects of Vorarlberg’s history, collaborator on exhibitions and DVDs with interviews with contemporary witnesses, and author of “Vorarlberg: Vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis zur Gegenwart” (Vorarlberg: From the First World War to the Present).

The guided tour was on Youtube.

About INN SITU