Staff Pick From The Library: Uta Barth

 Leafing through Phaidons monograph on Uta Barth one rainy lunchtime in the library, I almost feel myself slipping into a bit of a daze, something of a thousand yard stare. Not through disinterest or tiredness (as I sometimes do looking through art books), but because the sheer opticality of her work is quite mesmerizing. This daze I realise, is actually deep engagement which is partly down to the way Barth cleverly de-prioritises the object and by doing so implicates the viewers gaze directly. The minor becomes the major, so-called ‘subject matter’ is eliminated, and so we the viewer are projected into the act of looking with heightened awareness. 

These are not just out of focus photos Barth explains (which became very trendy post Richter), in fact they are completely in focus. Again, it is just that the object is absent, excluded, removed, leaving behind only background. But to describe it as ‘leaving behind’ is not quite right actually, because what Barth selects is very consciously meant to be seen….. this is not after all about the residual, or what is not there in any cliched ‘presence of absence’ kind of way, but more the reversal of hierarchy between background and foreground which seems to be a consistent thread running through Barths Oeuvre conceptually. This all puts me in mind of Pieter Vermeerch's beautiful painterly renderings of photographs honing in on the backgrounds of old master paintings in which he explores the perceptual complexities and ambiguities of verisimilitude captured by the photographic lens as a catalyst for painterly abstraction, colour field painting etc.

 Pieter Vermeersch

I also found myself enjoying Barths sensitivity to ‘edge’ which is actually very painterly, the sense of what is, or is not contained within the frame is completely considered and composed, not random or incidental like a snapshot. For me, it is this measured, considered quality which belies their exquisite quietness and sense of poise, akin to Morandi or Vermeer. Yes, the everyday is a well trodden subject, like just about every subject is, but with Barth it becomes a potential portal for abstraction, transcendence. 

Barths photography struck me as the visual equivalent of good ambient music, or field recording, perhaps you could even call it ‘Lowercase’ photography, the overlooked coming into focus. Very refreshing in what can sometimes feel like a cluttered and overly strident cultural and artistic landscape.