Perception and space are the central themes of Maria Böhm’s photography.
The photograph is here not just an end result, but is also integrated into the work as an object.
By positioning a photograph in a photograph, Miriam Böhm creates stage-like spaces that are almost always lined with some kind of fabric. Miriam Böhm lays open the process of rearranging and interlacing, thereby foregoing any photographic illusion. The resulting clarity, however, soon turns out to be misleading.
In her works, Miriam Böhm confounds and confuses the beholder and his habits of seeing. Because of her play with perspectives, the work can be interpreted from various directions.
The two-dimensional medium photography is, through being reproduced and staggered in the picture, transferred into a three-dimensionality which is, in the final photograph, once again returned to a two-dimensionality. This becomes especially clear in the new series Quartett, where angles create spaces on the smallest possible planes, and create through rotations a dynamics and tension. The result is a space-in-space situation.
In the series Set, shown at the gallery, the utensils required for the production of a picture are in the foreground. The picture is not made on an empty sheet, but rather by arranging the objects on the sheet and around it. In the end, the picture is only completed by the finished composed photograph.
All works share an extremely clear, precise, and documentary formal language. It remains open for a variety of interpretations.
Miriam Böhm's works were most recently exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and are part of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
