UNFORTUNATELY, IT IS PARADISE

Renate Graf‘s solo exhibition Unfortunately, it is paradise

Duration: 5 December 2024 – 18 January 2025 

Opening: 5 December 19:00-22:00

Crux Galerie presents a series of black and white photographs by acclaimed photographer Renate Graf. Renowned for her poetic and profound approach to the medium of analog photography, her work often bridges images and literature. In her artistic universe, writers such as Fernando Pessoa, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mahmood Darwish, Rabindranath Tagore, infiltrate the cultural and geographical richness of places like Jodhpur temples in India, Alaska’s icy landscapes, favela neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro, and many other landmarks around the world. Through extensive traveling and by developing her own pictures in the form of an endless personal diary, Renate Graf shapes her distinct photographic style, which she describes as a form of visual language that transcends traditional photographic documentation.

For her exhibition in Crux Galerie “Unfortunately, it is paradise”, a title that refers to the poet Mahmood Darwish, Graf presents large scale images that capture the festivities in honor of Saint Sebastian as they traditionally take place at Noto village in the South of Sicily complemented by photographs of decayed sculptures from cemeteries in Vienna. As the rapid movement of fireworks and confetti is captured in her film, forms become isolated and arrange themselves as if in a geometrical abstract painting. At the same time, the sensation of the fiesta brings forth an emotional reaction to the viewer. The instantaneous impressions from the Saint Sebastian festival contrast the slow passage of time indicated in the abandonment and collapse of the memorial stones.

Renate Graf was born in Austria and currently lives in Portugal. She has presented her work in solo exhibitions in many international venues, such as the House of Photography in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (2021), the Palacio Anjos in Oeiras, Portugal (2019) and the CerModern in Ankara, Turkey (2022). Many of her works are included in prestigious private and public collections worldwide.

“My images […] are neither complete nor conclusive[…] They work not only as image, but as language, as signposts pointing towards meaning […] they do not define, they witness, and in the vast cultural variety of an universe they are a language by itself, my language to describe what I see. They are my own language to try to describe the world as I see it.”

Renate Graf