Photo copies, neon, brick dust, film
20 x 5 x 2,74 m
1998
Photo: Rolf Sturm
Blick zurück nach vorn
Looking back to the future
[6] Dagmar Pachtners strategy for meeting the world, the processing of experience, so it seems is based on her search for the secret of the obvious. She shows that in her "View", in both senses of the word, to which the upper floor of the gallery is dedicated to. The view to the future, which is what the exhibition is about and the view from the window which has also a direct part in the work. Along the middle of the room is a long, narrow line of red brick dust. It is carefully brushed in along the long sides and is piled upwards imitating pretty much exactly the central beam of the gothic barn which is only a few meters above it. The small windows are also included in the installation. Instead of the real view, the viewer, gets a "View" on film frozen in time: back lit by neon are photographs placed in the hidden windows.
The work, for Dagmar Pachtner, is programmatic because she has a direct relationship with the immediate area; she takes the succinct, the unnoticeable, the normal dull things, looks etc. and shows them in an artistic way, transformed, worked, not more – not less.
Anke Humpender. Part of "Das Geheimnis des Offensichtlichen" from the Features Section Landshuter Newspaper, 9.7.1998.