Viktoria Binschtok. Connection

Commentary on today’s image economy Viktoria Binschtok‘s photographic works are physical echoes of the image flow produced by our digitally connected world. Her series Cluster and Networked Images (2014–2022) explore the phenomenon of today’s image economy, linking her own momentary images to staged reproductions of visual references in a photographic symbiosis. Her works become part of the larger net that Binschtok consciously casts over divergent visualities dissecting the vastness of our daily digital image production. The precise layering of her large-scale photo-objects generates visual connections with both subtle and apparent references to current realities—immaterial concepts thus take physical shape in new contexts of meaning, creating feed-back loops between online and offline. Connection refers to both a global, non-verbal cross-linking through images as well as to connections within Binschtok’s artistic work. Thus, the book opens with Three People on the Phone, an early series Binschtok photographed on the streets of Tokyo in 2004, visualizing how the absorbed presence of the people immersed in a dialogue with their devices connects the physical space of the city with the channels of the new, digital world—an interaction that is constantly reiterated in Binschtok’s work. Moscow-born artist VIKTORIA BINSCHTOK (*1972) studied Photography and Media Arts at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. Today, she lives and works in Berlin. In addition to institutional solo exhibitions at the Museum Folkwang Essen, C/O Berlin and Kunstmuseum Bonn, she has participated in numerous international group exhibitions, including Centre Pompidou Metz and Paris, Fondazione Prada Milano, Pier 24 San Francisco, Arts Santa Monica Barcelona, Bergen Kunsthall Norway, Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and Centre de la photographie Genève. Oldenburger Kunstverein, 4.2.–24.4.2022