With “Portobello” the the Basle-based artist Hildegard Spielhofer presents her first publication. The carefully and ingeniously designed illustrated book shows numerous photographs from the work “Portobello” and deepens the context of the work with two precise texts by Maja Naef and Adam Szymczyk.
Hildegard Spielhofer’s work is characterized by its complexity. In between installation, video and photography, solo and teamwork, she develops projects of great density. For “Portobello” she visited the same place several times over the course of seven years and subjected it to a photographic process: a remote, deserted beach on the north coast of Sardinia. In this remote place she found a stranded boat …
Maja Naef describes the process in her text: There she fixes the camera with the tripod at a certain place, which she chooses differently for each shot. She opens the camera lens at an exposure time of twelve minutes. Then she begins to illuminate the surface of the boat with a flashlight. As if something could emerge that is not visible in daylight. On the contrary, the torch’s strong beam does not illuminate anything and does not create transparency. The light that the apparatus finally absorbs seems to close off the material surface of the hull. It becomes opaque and heavy. Like in a dream, where conditions are reversed, becoming threatening and strange faces appear.”
The photographs from “Portobello” are of magical power and great potential for association. Adam Szymczyk states that the shipwreck serves as a monument to adventurous individual existence, to be contemplated in awe and silence.