About the artworks of Silvia M. Grossmann

Fascinated by the manifold guises of the urban environment, Silvia M. Grossmann finds inspiration in buildings and courtyards for her work. The objects she creates are a synthesis of picture, photo-collage and sculpture. By combining photographic elements, paper and wire as constructional components, she creates structures with a façade like character in which the viewer is presented with a range of different urban manifestations.

Solid building structures imply both a sense of living space and a state of being, they appear to her like shields covering the life behind and within them. In dealing with these manifestations, her artwork plays on one's sense of spatial perception and perspective. This enables the objects to unsettle the viewer's usual optical standpoint, creating confusion in what he or she sees and seemingly transforming otherwise firmly rooted façades into free floating lightness.

The objects come to assume a life of their own by resisting the realism of the façades and transcending the functionality of their form, thus forging a bridge for free association. The newfound lightness, the connection between duplicate image and form provides an opportunity for creating perspectives that go beyond what once was, thereby revealing what had hitherto been concealed.

A powerful stimulus and complex message is harboured by this interplay between photos of façades, genuinely unique structures, distinctive form and titles such as "Tänzer (dancer)", "Commedia" and "Fenster zum Hof (rear window)".

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