Well, overworking ones artist´s photos through drawing, painting or other media has quite a long history and many artists have a period or a series of works in their ouvre where they tried this expression (see Gerhard Richter, Arnulf Rainer, Shirin Neshat, Franz West, Albert Oehlen, etc.).
We experienced that the medium of over-painted or over-worked photography is very adequate for the project W(H)O IS WU?; through its specific mediality the over-painted photography is open for conceptual and collective approaches. Several heterogeneous perspectives are possible simultaneously and they are mutual depended. That kind of artistic method has a broad and comprehensive choice of selection. We do understand the method of over-painted photography as a conceptual undertaking. Topics as historicity, copyright, media and the relation of painting and photography are scrutinized. The series of photos can function as the documentary, realistic, objective part, the painting as counterpart and vice versa. From the structural perspective the trans-medial over-painted photography is quite similar to the trans-cultural approach of the project W(H)O IS WU? itself.
On the long run this approach explicitly shall cross over to other media such as performance, installation, sound or video art.
For the current cooperation and the exhibition in May photo works from four different artists are over-worked by two visual artists.
The W(H)O IS WU? exhibition at Waley Art Gallery will not just present over-worked photography but also other austro-taiwanese artistic encounters*
