SALZBURG.- "Extroverted Images“ brings together five international artists who explore the intersection of photography and sculpture. Their works go beyond two-dimensional images, take over the physical exhibition space, and engage with the materiality of photography. At the same time, they reflect on the public, cultural, and socio- technical spaces where photography circulates today. The artists manipulate their images by rotating, distorting, and even melting them. By doing so, they expand photography both artistically and as a medium. Their work also raises new questions about the value and meaning of images in contemporary art and media. The exhibition follows in the tradition of expanded photography, a concept described by Peter Weibel.

Peter Weibel‘s media-theoretical reflections on expanded photography are based on the object-camera-image constellation. Within this framework, the photographic process, photographic technology, and the image itself can be broken down into individual components. These include the subject being photographed, the method of capture, the lenses or chemicals used, and technical factors like sharpness and exposure. The staging and conscious engagement with these individual elements are what define expanded and artistic photography.

The revisiting of Weibel’s conceptual and analytical approaches, particularly regarding the transgression of the image frame and the photographic occupation of space, gains significance in light of new technologies, evolving cultural practices, and the expansion of photographic processes through digital spaces. The exhibition invites visitors to explore contemporary artistic variations of an expanded photographic media concept.

In her work, BILLIE CLARKEN visualizes personal experiences and memories through the use of found photographs from pop culture and mass media. By detaching the imagery from its original context and materiality, she arranges it within installations featuring everyday objects that often reference U.S. popular culture. The ongoing series „Chewing Tongue“ focuses on Cursed Images, an internet phenomenon that refers to mysterious pictures oscillating between comedy and discomfort, often provoking contradictory reactions in viewers. Exposed onto foam and enclosed in VHS protective sleeves, Clarken references a collective mode of engaging with internet images and transfers their impact onto her own childhood memories.

Another key aspect of Clarken’s work is her engagement with cultural constructions, which she approaches in part through advertising imagery. Her installation „Fort!Da!“, consisting of a foam strip pierced by a pipe and leaning against plastic boxes, functions as a layered commentary on the processes of growing up. The boxes are typical American milk crates, the foam image features a portrait of young Miley Cyrus (from Vanity Fair cover photographed by Annie Leibovitz in 2008), and the pipe alludes to the college drinking game Wisest Wizard, in which beer cans are stacked and taped together.

The animated films of NIKITA DIAKUR are created using 3D software and can be described as dynamic computer simulations that embrace spontaneity, randomness, and error. The filmmaker often works with photographic textures while simultaneously integrating the underlying software into his films by making its structures visible.
Inspired by countless online tutorials on how to do a backflip and his own desire to learn, Diakur practices in his room until he breaks his toe. Faced with the fear of further injuries, he shifts the learning process into the digital realm. He creates an avatar, reconstructs his environment, and employs tools such as Deep Mimic, a machine-learning algorithm that imitates human movements based on video data. At first, the AI also fails, though with the advantage that the avatar cannot get injured.

In „backflip,“ Diakur humorously explores the ubiquitous video tutorial as a medium for digital learning and knowledge transfer, while reflecting on human experiences with success and failure. At the same time, he highlights the growing tendency to outsource physical and cognitive tasks to technical systems. His process also points to a crucial development in photography: the increasing role of computer vision—the ability of computers to autonomously capture, analyze, and simulate images in the digital space. Diakur’s work exemplifies how digital image data plays an expanding role in how we perceive and interpret the world, challenging the traditional notion of image and space as something confined to physical reality.

In his artistic practice, CLEMENS FISCHER focuses on image apparatuses and the relationship between images and their viewers. His constructions combine photographic, motorized, hydraulic, or pyrotechnic elements: Sometimes as large- scale installations, sometimes as experimental setups documented in short videos. His recurring use of surveillance cameras and conventional monitors serves as a commentary on the relationship between private and public imagery. At the same time, it highlights surveillance capabilities and raises questions about how images are processed and interpreted.

The work „Kerze (Studie II),“ developed specifically for this exhibition, explores the visibility and invisibility of surveillance images. Drawing on the tradition of still life, four surveillance cameras observe a candle burning down. The candle is placed on a screen that displays a live transmission of the scene. As the wax melts, it gradually obscures the surveillance footage, causing the image to disappear over the course of the exhibition.

ALEX GREIN explores the pictorial potential of photographic processes. Starting from traditional photography, she examines the processing, reproduction, and archiving of images, particularly in the context of digital tools and techniques.

In „Speicher“, Grein incorporates her own image archive, presenting everyday and utilitarian photographs accumulated on her cameras, smartphones, tablets, and hard drives. The work confronts viewers with the overwhelming flood of digital images that pervade both online platforms and private life.

This abundance of images causes individual, personal photographs to become overlaid, overlooked, and intangible. Grein’s installation directly responds to this sense of ephemerality. Along the edges of laboratory-like stainless steel basins, smartphone and tablet holders are mounted. Inside them, blocks of ice encase private photographs. As the exhibition progresses, the ice melts, gradually dissolving the images. What remains is a paper-like residue, collected in the basin and stored in a container – serving as a small yet poignant metaphor for the impermanence of digital image archives.

LUCAS LEFFLER’S work is based on historical events that have significantly changed photographic imaging technologies. He explores the traces left behind by the photo industry, using a variety of materials. These include his own and found photographs of industrial ruins, site-specific materials from former production locations, such as soil from old factory grounds, which he uses as a surface for his images, and other materials linked to these sites, like celluloid film.

His series „Ektachrome“ and „Implosion“ are based on two key events: the release of the first iPhone in 2007 and the collapse of Kodak in 2012. Leffler develops YouTube footage of Kodak factory demolitions onto smartphone screens using the wet collodion process. With this, he references the transition from analog to digital imaging. His choice of materials also highlights another technological shift, as wet collodion glass plates were once replaced by celluloid film.

By arranging elements such as iPhones and large-format negatives, Leffler draws attention to the role of technical standards and industrial norms in photography. His work explores the history of the photo industry and its production methods, emphasizing how technological shifts impact the medium.