Artist's statement

Artist’s statement by Pia Arke for the group show Legitimationskort [Identity Card], The Young Artists Society, Oslo, May – June, 1992.

The Danish text reads:

“Pia Arke b. 1958

Function

For me, photography is about building up quality. That’s what it’s about; that is to say, it’s about my image lust for life and its stories. Photographs make you crazy about photographs. They don’t show anything as it is; they show our search for things in themselves and in that way keep us up to the mark. Through correct exposure, the photograph appears as a kind of wise woman or as the great shaman. It is like a thought experiment and hence isn’t really valid. Nevertheless, it gives precise expression to penetrating insights: it answers questions with questions and postpones everything indefinitely. And the photograph frees us from having to do all this ourselves. It functions as our way of putting off things, as the only thing we do not put off. Action The photograph is about quality and all sorts of other things, just as all sorts of other things are about quality and all sorts of other things. It can tell us a lot. We don’t know whether it is speaking for itself or not; in that sense it is impenetrable. The photograph is action, and it is always about something. Life, reality, truth; living, real, true forms. The world has gone ape, we wallow in excess consumption and ignorance about the consequences of our behavior; life is continual change, lightning quick changes, lack of time, impetus, family, job, career, elbows. Life is a mess. But that’s not all. For to this we must add our view, our reflection, attitudes, morals, anxiety, and unreasonable courage, our embarrassingly simple philosophies about oppositions and completeness. Or rather: the two things must be multiplied with each other. In the old days, one could decide what came first and what followed: thing or perspective. That doesn’t apply any longer. Logic Where does the photograph come into the picture? Does it come in at all? Does it have anything that might be called a unity, something to place against diversity? Can one bank on a sublime simple-mindedness? The photograph tells us about the confused relation between things that are real and things that are true. Between three dimensions and two dimensions. The two groups of dimensions are almost too closely interwoven in the photograph. How can one oneself become part of this connectedness, this new form of beauty? This objective and artificial embellishment, this negative of the negative. Psychologically, the photograph confronts me with my limitations, my inadequacy and laziness, which are a part of the photographic precision in exemplary fashion. But between what is less than an image and what is more, one can expect to find – an image. That, logically, is the photograph. An image of art and beauty, a theory of what must necessarily come.”

Collection of the Danish National Art Library, Copenhagen.