Mask-making

These are some of my masks that I made in the last year - since I started.
Nathalie Bélanger and Serafin Lindau made these great photographs.

Exhibition at "Haus am See", Berlin

Solo Exhibition "self shots on canvas" 03/22 - 04/10 2013

Self Shot 1, oil on canvas, 90 x 120cm

Anne Grabow: Self Shots on Canvas
Solo exhibition at Mein Haus Am See. Exhibition dates: 21.03.13 – 10.04.13.

For her first solo exhibition in Berlin, the multimedia artist Anne Grabow presents her public with a playful series of seven paintings that do more than merely address the notions of passivity and narcissism as having become integral to the Information Age and go beyond simply challenging pre-established roles. Emphatically celebrated as a kind of spectacular object, the artist’s own likeness is repeatedly thrust upon the gaze to induce, through a kaleidoscope of intimacy and a cascade of longing, a convoluted act of voyeurism.

Subsequent to a long tradition of female self-portraiture and in many ways echoing the work of Claude Cahun or Cindy Sherman, the conceptual self-portraits that constitute Self Shots on Canvas depict the artist in what would appear to be various poses in a variety of roles. Indeed, having aspired at a young age toward a theatrical career and having later received her diploma in costume design, the notion of adopted roles is nothing new to fashion designer, musician, video-artist and painter Anne Grabow. In this case, however, her insistence upon the painterly medium has provided the artist with a means by which to refine the complexity of her role-playing games. Not only the portrayals themselves but the formal properties, painterly styles and pictorial references employed to produce them have all been imbued with the same fantastic, interchangeable qualities that children so flippantly attribute to their props and apparel when indulging in dress-up games.

 Self Shots 2 - 7:

                          

Whether portrayed as Ophelia sinking into a bed of flowers (Self Shot 3), as a Caravaggian temptress (Self Shot 5), a Van Dyckish, Elizabethan Bowie (Self Shot 4) or a modern pop star alla Botticelli (Self Shot 7), Grabow plays with history and identity in much the same way she might do with make-up for a fashion shoot. Yet, however reminiscent of work by artists such as Sherman her self-portraits may appear to be, she has nevertheless retained in her depictions—in this regard more akin to the paintings of Frida Kahlo—something that her more recent predecessors have often attempted to veil: the artist’s own distinctive facial features. 

In this respect, the roles, as it were, would appear not to be roles at all but rather something more like mirror images in a comprehensive, virtual fitting room. In fact, the poses are not really poses either: these portraits are in no way staged but instead selected from a wide range of almost arbitrarily shot photographic templates, the origins of which become clearer upon consideration of the protagonist’s gaze and the object toward which it is directed—namely toward itself as captured by the artist’s Web-cam with a single tap of the touchpad (a notion that is further underscored, in some cases, by the colouration of the reflected monitor-light).

Whether taken by Grabow out of boredom, an eagerness toward instant gratification, the desire to document her own development amidst the passing of time to produce a sort of visual diary or the spontaneous will to appraise her own immediate appearance, these Web-cam stills in painterly form represent a small selection from an endless row of digital originals. Thus recalling the photo booth portraits of Andy Warhol, a certain Pop quality clearly emerges. In contrast to the silk-screen method, however, these snapshots have been arduously painted into oversized existence. Still, they refrain from any photo-realistic ambitions. Far from employing any use of projection, Grabow worked from thumbshot-sized colour printouts to produce these fairly large-formatted canvases. The question, then, is why all the trouble? Art-historical aims aside, what is it, finally, that is to be monumentalized through painting here? Perhaps nothing other than the loneliness of being an everyday voyeur—a voyeur who watches themselves. How boring. How terribly sad. How utterly unsatisfying and yet altogether characteristic of being-in-the-spectacular-world. Not to worry though; Anne Grabow has found a novel solution. With her series of seven emphatic Self Shots, she insists that we join in on the fun. The beholder is adamantly called upon to watch her watching herself and thus become the voyeur par excellence. But, just to make sure that the roles are clear, she’s been wise enough to play the fool (Self Shot 1) and—as though to exclaim How now, my hearts! Did you never see the picture of ‘we three’?—remind the beholder that someone is watching them watching her watching herself.

Nathan Moore
 

DER DIE DAS

Bodypainting for an artwork of Nuno Henriques. 
This will help you to learn the german articles of all parts of the body.
"DER" is blue, "DIE" is red, "DAS" is yellow!

2008 The nothing doing bar

24.-31.01 2007, Dörte Lange and me showing video portraits at the Ill Galleries Berlin (www.illgalleries.com)
The Nothing Doing Bar consists of a series of portraits based on a surrealist play of the same name by Jean Cocteau. It playfully deals with the creation of personality.

The Nothing Doing Bar setzt sich spielerisch mit der Inszenierung von Persönlichkeit auseinander und wirft Fragen auf zu Künstlichkeit und Authentzität. Ausgehend von Jean Cocteaus Theaterstück inszenieren die Künstlerinnen Anne Grabow und Dörte Lange Videoporträts von fiktiven Personen, denen sie mit Hilfe von eigens entworfenen Kostümen und Requisiten eine Gestalt geben. Hierbei arbeiten sie mit realen Darstellern, die die fiktiven Charaktere verkörpern. Die extreme Künstlichkeit der Kostüme und der festgelegten Inszenierung wird jedoch unterwandert: Die Darsteller erhalten weder Regieanweisungen noch Erklärungen zu den von ihnen verkörperten Charakteren und werden im Moment der Porträtaufnahme sich selbst allein und der Kamera ausgesetzt. In ihrer Arbeit verweisen die Künstlerinnen zum einen auf eine Kunstgattung, die sich mit Einsetzen der Renaissance großer Beliebtheit erfreute, der Porträtmalerei, und kokettieren mit dem Gedanken, das ganze Wesen eines Menschen durch seine Abbildung zum Ausdruck bringen zu können. Gleichzeitig bedienen sie sich fiktiven Charakteren eines surrealistischen Theaterstücks und spielen hiermit auf die Bedeutung des Unterbewußten und der Vielzahl von Charakterebenen an. Durch den Einsatz des Mediums Video wird die Arbeit zusätzlich durch eine Zeitkomponente erweitert. Die Porträts sind nicht eingefroren, sondern verändern sich und veranschaulichen die Beziehung zwischen dem Darsteller und der Kamera, zwischen Subjekt und Objekt.
Die Nothing Doing Bar ist eine Kunstwelt, in der die Grenzen von Realität verwischt werden, ein genußvolles Zelebrieren von Verkleidung, Transformation und spielerischer Kreativität.

Die Videoporträts werden als Teil einer Rauminstallation präsentiert. Der Galleriebesucher tritt tagsüber in eine nachtdunkle Bar. Ihn erwartet ein minimal anmutendes Interieur: Sitzgelegenheiten mit surrealem Flair, exotische Musik, ein Getränkeautomat, Tageszeitungen vom Vortag. Die Videoportäts bilden einen einstündigen Loop, der in einen ovalen Rahmen projeziert wird. Die Nachtbar-Atmosphäre lädt den Gallerie-Besucher zum langen Verweilen ein. Eine Interaktion mit der Bar ist erwünscht.

2006 Video/Performance

After (video-) performing in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, I was asked to participate on the Dvd "Videoscreening" and got invited to perform in the IMAGO Filmfestival 2006 in Fundao, Portugal

2005-2006 video-art and painting in Lissabon

Studying painting and video in the Artschool AR.CO, Lisbon, Portugal.


Video made on my balcony in Rua Heliodoro Salgado, Lisbon