Photography today has become nearly ubiquitous, and it’s now such an intrinsic part of our everyday lives that it’s hard to imagine a reality without it. The work of Ilia Beckmann seeks to thoroughly examine photography in contemporary society, questioning its value while at the same time providing its own answers. Simultaneously work of technical ability and handcrafting, these diverse pieces prompt the viewer to critically analyse photography as an artistic medium.
Ilia studied media publishing in Germany and attended classes in Cologne at the Institute of Art History and the Academy of Media Arts. Currently, he is studying photography at the University of Applied Science in Dortmund, travelling to Australia in June this year to complete an exchange program at Griffith University.
“Photography is my biggest background, although I would say that first of all I’m an artist, then I’m a photographer, then I’m an artist again”, Ilia said. “I always think in terms of art, but I use photography as my main medium.”
Ilia’s first solo exhibition entitled ‘Mens in Corpore’ was displayed in the upper floor of the Woolloongabba Art Gallery over the weekend, drawing in art enthusiasts from across Brisbane. Containing a selection of work developed over a two year period, these pieces have been produced with complicated photographic and sculptural techniques that are still in the process of being perfected and expanded upon.
“It always takes time in the beginning, then you find out what you want and how it works, and you can actually produce it pretty quickly”, Ilia said. “It’s all quite different work, but I think it’s been really organic coming together. These pieces can work together, and talk to each other, although they’re still bodies of work which can exist by themselves.”
Ilia’s portraits and sculptures can certainly be appreciated on a superficial level, but it’s the process behind the work and the complicated procedures involved that make the art all the more captivating. One of the most visually striking pieces in the exhibition was Ilia’s Fotoplastik series, which were essentially black and white photographs onto plaster cast faces. He applied the chemicals normally used for developing photos on paper onto the three dimensional object, which took months of experimenting and adjusting to make the plaster waterproof and chemical proof. Another piece which attracted significant attention was his tile mosaic entitled ‘Dem Bildnis ein Denkmal’. This is roughly translated to mean “A memorial for the Image”, but Ilia stressed the importance of the word ‘Denk!’, meaning to think. This piece was conceived during the artist’s studies when he was asked to produce ‘constructed photography’. Taking digital photographs of tiles and printing them skilfully with colour management onto paper, he mounted those inkjet prints onto wood in the same size of the tiles and then arranged the real and artificial pieces together. Instead of showing something constructed as being unreal or fake looking, he showed that it could look nearly identical to reality.
Even though photography is central to Ilia’s work as an artist, he describes his affiliation with the medium as a love/hate relationship. At its inception, photography had a difficult struggle to become accepted as an art form, but today, this is not questioned at all. In some ways Ilia’s work is a critique of photography’s almost unchallenged artistic merit, but it also seeks to address the medium’s shortcomings in its own way.
“I think my work shows what photography can be and how great photography is, but at the same time it shows how problematic it can be. Especially my Fotoplastik series, which shows that photography can be seen as the perfect combination between beautiful and terrible, and between very alive and very dead,” Ilia continued, “The dominant theme is that the medium is the message. I encountered problems with this medium, and I wanted to give solutions. I just want people to be a little more critical about photography, and try find out the actual purpose for making pictures is, what you can learn, and what’s good about it.”
As for his next artistic endeavours, Ilia will continue to refine his techniques and work towards more exhibitions in the near future. Finding himself often exhausted when working with the same subject matter, he strives to push himself in new and interesting directions. His immediate plans are to continue developing the processes demonstrated by his Fotoplastik series, and introducing colour pigment into its already intricate procedure. He would also like to expand upon his work with backdrops, an idea which occupied only a small part of his latest exhibition.
“Unfortunately this exhibition was just for four days, but I came to Australia hardly knowing anybody, and I’m really happy that I was able to achieve so much, and I’m really glad and grateful to have had this opportunity,” Ilia said. “I’m full of ideas, and I’m really interested in experiencing something right here and now in the space-time continuum with other people together, creating really emotional spaces”.
“I try to avoid making my work too reproducible. Because of the many steps involved, the more mistakes I can make, and mistakes are actually a great source of new and interesting things. I just hope that younger people who grow up in times where the computer is such a normal thing, that they still learn to do things with their bodies, to do something with more soul.”
Visit Ilia Beckmann’s website: www.iliabeckmann.com
