The exhibition aims at challenging traditional views on gender roles, while addressing historical paradigmatic shifts connected to personal collapse. Through a number of projects, Vinje has explored the exercise of power within the aesthetic realm. Depot. Depository. Rays will tell the story of her encounter with the Czech photographer František Drtíkol (1883-1961), an artist internationally celebrated as a master of Modernism, and widely known for his studio work on portraits and nudes. Drtíkol had close contact with the European avant-gardes during the interwar years and held a close dialogue with the Austrian philosopher and pedagogue Rudolf Steiner. Drtíkol explored geometrical and organic forms at the interplay of light and shadow using objects and lighting to stage models, and to shape bodies into forms.
By looking at Drtíkol, Vinje’s work raises questions on how representations of historical views are still relevant today. Vinje thereby asks if we can remake a historical situation, to deconstruct a gaze that has institutionally been imposed upon us. Her exhibition points towards alterations from an external to an internal perspective, where the possibility to withdraw and dedicate ones’ life to an idea comes as a natural response to crisis and disorder within a society. When artists and intellectuals are supposed to provide strategies of survival they also take on a position with an awareness of possible failure, the outermost consequence leading to a personal collapse.
