(Excerpt)

…
Every picture, every photograph, demonstrates (something); this demonstrative gesture constitutes its universal character, its very notation. Demonstrating something through photography is an important point of departure in Robert F. Hammerstiel’s most recent works, the Salzburger Blätter (The Salzburg Leaves). The ostensible subject in this series are various types of flowers, especially roses. Their form of presentation links them to 19th century genre paintings and their genus is the still life. In many ways, this art historical reference – it could be read as a quote here – has constitutive implications for the Salzburger Blätter. It is formal in reference to reproduction methods, repetition and imitation, and aesthetical in the sense of a certain strategy of representation, and thematic when it comes to ways of representing Nature.

Photographed wrapping paper as the picture background and a “real” bouquet of flowers, or roses before it constitute an ensemble of individual works. This basic idea is varied in a minimalistic sense. Their mise en scène dissolves in its interferential references the relation between model and representation; only the vase betrays the truth and makes it possible for the viewer to experience visual disappointment. Thus Hammerstiel also interweaves the characteristics of photography as pictorial medium with the material he uses for his pictures by referring to its reproductive, industrialised and substitutive quality…

Carl Aigner, Vienna 1992