Strokes

Milena Langer works with dismantled displays that have lost their original function as image carriers for external content. The deactivated screens become material surfaces that reflect what is directly in front of them. This shifts the status of the image: instead of a signal generated and controlled by devices, there is a situational reflection of the viewer and the space. In this decoupling of screen and image, the screen itself becomes visible, not as a portal to a virtual world, but as a physical object that frames perception and self-reference. Langer’s works thus explore the mediality of the display beyond its intended function by revealing how much the medially mediated image usually obscures our own presence.

For her Jahresgabe, Langer expands her practice to include painting for the first time: in the series Strokes, the moment of reflection is found in brushstrokes. The brushstrokes are oriented towards the formal grid of the display visible in the digital sensors on the sides; the screen’s original function as a grid is thus restored. The painting on the display surface thus moves in the field of tension between the freely guided hand and the formal grid of image production and presentation.