Taubert Contemporary opens first comprehensive exhibition of Austrian artist Inge Dick
Inge Dick, blue, infinite, 2018/2023. 28.6.2010 – 06:52:44 - 19:04:39. Hahnemühle Photo Luster 260g on aluminum, acrylic glass, edition of 3, 1/3, 47.2 x 47.2 inches © Taubert Contemporary, Berlin; Photo: Martin Müller, Berlin.
BERLIN.—
The title of the exhibition, Lichtzeiten (Light-Times), can be read as an accurate description of the entire body of work by Inge Dick, which is being presented for the first time in a comprehensive exhibition at Taubert Contemporary. For more than six decades, the Austrian artist has devoted herself to the quiet observation of light and time—their transitions, nuances, and barely perceptible changes.
Building on her early paintings, Inge Dick developed a radical reduction in her work from an early stage. Influenced by Zen philosophy and the paintings of Antonio Calderara, she created her white, spatula-applied paintings, which have become a hallmark of her body of work. In the untitled works from the 1980s and 1990s, as well as in the more recent white paintings on display in the exhibition, this approach unfolds in subtly nuanced surfaces in which light, color, and perception enter into a delicate interplay.
In the late 1970s, Inge Dick turned to photography. What began as a pragmatic endeavor became a decisive expansion of her artistic language. In serial works such as the 12-Hour Day Wall (1985), time is not depicted but rather made visible as a condensed process. The focus is not on the individual image, but on the sequence, the minimal shift, and the space in between. With her move to Mondsee in the early 1980s, nature—water, sky, weather, and the seasons—became the inspiration for her work. Series such as bleu du ciel (1999, 2004) depict the sky, color, and light in serial sequences and through various media—ranging from Ilfochrome and Fujicolor to large-format prints on aluminum and acrylic glass. The series la mer (2012/2026) also increasingly detaches the motif of the sea from the representational and transforms it into abstract color spaces.
At the same time, she is creating Polaroid works featuring white surfaces, whose intense shades of blue stem from the specific properties of the material. In these, she photographs monochrome surfaces at regular intervals throughout an entire day—from the first light of day until the light has completely faded—using a constant aperture and exposure time. The Polaroids mark an important transition in Dick’s work, in which material, color, and time form an inseparable connection. The larger-than-life photographs in the Boston Polaroids series are unique, as Inge Dick was the last artist in 1999 to be able to take photographs with the world’s largest Polaroid camera—the camera was dismantled that very same year.
Following the end of Polaroid technology, a new chapter began in 2006 with digital film: In film works such as zinnober (2009/2010) and the film stills derived from it, color itself becomes an event. In series such as frühlings licht weiss (2019) or the 20-part series sommer licht weiss (2020), Inge Dick visualizes the diverse color spectrum of the seasons in chronological strips or square grids. Marked with precise timecodes, time is condensed into visual color sequences in which both change and duration can be experienced simultaneously.
In her most recent, small-format paintings, gold leaf is introduced as a new material. While white absorbs light, gold reflects it—thus completes the work to a full circle. The exhibition Lichtzeiten (Light-Times) brings together key groups of works by Inge Dick into a precisely composed exhibition in which analog and digital techniques, photography and painting, sequences and individual images interpenetrate one another. What becomes visible is a body of work that does not depict time but rather makes it tangible—as the continuous movement of light.
– Dr. Gerda Ridler
Inge Dick, born in 1941 in Vienna, Austria.
She lives and works in Innerschwand am Mondsee, Austria.
