Ambach & Rice from Los Angeles presents a solo exhibition of new works by German artist Martina Sauter. Sauter conflates photography and cinema to produce psychologically charged vignettes that extend time and space.
A new series of photographs including a group of swimming pool photos shot at collectors’ homes in Los Angeles is exhibited.
Fiction is concealed and extended in Sauter’s photographic constructions. Memory serves as an entry point to elicit the faint echo of familiarity. Re-photographed film stills, captured on her television screen, merge with photographs shot in and around Sauter’s home and studio. Film stills faintly drift from their source once merged with staged photographs of domestic objects and interiors. These scenes exude suspense despite their quotidian
nature, casting concealment as a platform for suggestion.
When selecting film stills Sauter eschews iconic scenes in favor of anonymous segues, passages both temporal and architectural. These stages are laden with suspense; allowing absence to trigger imagined implications, leaving outcomes to be resolved by the viewer. When actors are present they are typically relegated to the background, backs turned to the camera to implicate the viewer as witness or voyeur.
Martina Sauter was born in Constance, Germany in 1974. From 2000 through 2006 she attended Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where she studied under Thomas Ruff and graduated as one of his master students. Recent exhibits include Correspondence, AMBACH & RICE, Los Angeles, CA, Martina Sauter, Marion Scharmann, Cologne, DE Neues Rheinland. Die postironische Generation, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, DE, and Manuel Graf / Martina Sauter, Kunststiftung Baden Württemberg, Stuttgart, DE. Her work has bee exhibited at institutions that include The Aperture Foundation, New York, Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam and Ludwig Forum in Aachen. Sauter received both the Thieme Art Award and the Young Artists on the Road Award in 2006. She currently resides in Düsseldorf, Germany.
