Comments on alles oder nichts/all or nothing, 2017

The sensitive photo collage all or nothing by Brigitte Konyen is about personal stories and the creation of one´s own history and reality. 

The artist focuses intensly on a subject “that hits everyone, regardless of age, usually several times in the very depths of their being“.

It is about love, in particular unrequited love, the desire for love, the infatuation and the love sorrow.

“I reinvent my own love stories, place photographs from my own archive next to recent shots and show in photo montages souvenir shots (e.g., of myself with actors, musicians that I admire) that never existed as such – but now on photographic paper they become a non-negotiable reality.“ Yet not all photos are fake which only serves to heighten the irritation. The collage of pictures is enriched with hand-written excerpts from Goethe´s The Sorrows of Young Werther.

In a both poetical and profound  way, Konyen brings to life the personal past – or a memory thereof – and reflects on the subjective connotations of an image or event. A photograph is said to always be a depiction of something past, thus of something that can only be recalled. “Memories are constructions of the present“, as Konyen observes. She is interested in creating a different story, a different image and letting this come to life between fact and fiction: “It´s my true memory, my story.“

Günther Oberhollenzer, 2017