a moment

The work focuses the merging of space and time, during a climbing tour, together
with the extreme climber, Darshano L. Rieser.

The synchronization of time and the merging of time and space define the elements of Christiane Fleissner’s work - between photography and sculpture.
In doing so, she has the time-space continuum firmly in her sights; the theory of relativity is designated as the union of time and space in a consistent
structure with special characteristics in which spatial and temporal coordinates can be intermingled by the transition into a different reference frame.
Christiane Fleissner shows in her multilayered work the superimposition of time and space, of moods and outcomes, by placing varied plexiglass plates that are either directly laminated with a photograph or have one mounted behind it. The surface structures have matt and shiny areas so that the foreground may be blurred and underlying layers are distinctly „zoomed-in“ on. Fleissner’s „incidental landscapes“ let the viewer become a time and space traveller. In old industrial landscapes the plaster is peeling off the walls and deep puddles have formed on the floors reflecting the windows and doors.
Is it the same room or does it open up another level, a deeper-lying, past layer? One can’t be sure in which time zone one is.
How does the trained sculptor make use of photographic means and methods – by montage or double exposure?
Christiane Fleissner’s works merge sculpture and photography. With her focus on the three-dimensionality of the image she captures,
she’s also examining „realities“ of previous eras. But what does the word „reality“ really mean? Is it more about a holistic-emotional approach?
A location’s aura? Even if it sounds rather esoteric, it is a quality of the quintessential Christiane Fleissner to track down the past and to layer the
ambience of previous years or decades into a bundle of images that simultaneously merge the „here and now“.
Time fades away; time runs off and is refilled – according to the English poet and natural mystic William Blake whom the artist quotes in terms of content with her depiction of „layers of time“. In her technical method of constructing an image, the artist also arranges various layers. Photography enables her to show the moment directly, transparently printed on a plexiglass plate. The transparency grants a view from both sides. Any classification of fore- and background appears to be obsolete. This creates other images, other forms and „new“ moments. Moments that are assembled over each other are partially and skeletally cut-up, divided into separate fragments, and then reassembled in a new order or sequence.
Christiane Fleissner takes away the viewer’s logical linear temporal sequence and shows in her sculptural works simultaneity of events.
In Blake’s contemplation and examination of the time-space continuum, time is the male principle and space the female element.
„Through the penetration of both, according to Blake, a multiple echo of particular events, are in a state of relative simultaneity in regard to their totality...
Every particular moment opens while passing by in the permanent presence of this fluctuating organism and thereby receives its „manifold“ holistic imprint.“
*From Alchemie & Mysticism by Alexander Roob, p 26
Dissected and overlying structures create spatial depth that at the same time hold moments of dispersal. Christiane Fleissner’s pictures oscillate between a documentary and fictional approach – the search for changes between the past and the present, and moments of home,
between the derelict and the idyll.