Images of Space / Image Spaces
by Anja Osswald


(excerpt)

The category of space is inextricably linked to the directedness of our gaze. The gaze constructs and reconstructs space as well as distance. Therefore, every experience of space also implies a physical sensation. The axioms of the vertical and the horizontal, rooted in the horizon and humankind's ability to walk upright, are basic factors of quantifying space, of measuring depth and width.
In Ariane Pauls' video pieces, spatial parameters play an essential role in the choice of setting. Her sequences of architectural spaces and landscapes demonstrate her deep interest in the construction of perspective: while the horizon's line of the Atlantic ocean in 6058 x 2438 x 2591 (2007) ) implies the depth of the depicted landscape, footage recorded in archives for 42 000 lfm and 280 000 lfm (both 2007) show corridors between parallel book shelves, opening up a perspective view. The measurements of these shelves, which are also the titles of both pieces, refer to spatial expansion. The parallel alignment of the shelving seems to stretch deep into the image, creating an imaginary vanishing point. The illusion of depth in these images is quite suggestive. The observer's gaze is pulled into the depicted space, but repeatedly bounces back to the surface. This is mainly due to Ariane Pauls' treatment of the film material. By using strategies of doubling and serial arrangements of sequences, the artist converts image space into surface. In the video installation Untitled (2006), a similar effect is generated by darkening the scenario. A camera scans a dark, bare space - a parking garage, a construction site? - in a 360 degree pan shot while the light of a slide projector sporadically illuminates fragments of the space. The observer is unable to fully grasp the spatial parameters of the situation. His/her gaze is literally diverted by the pan shot. A horizontal movement along the surface of the image replaces the vertical movement into the image. While the images spread out, the space contracts into the surface of the image, accentuating a divergence between the perception of the surface and that of the space image. In this sense, Ariane Pauls' stagings refer to Gaston Bachelard's 'Poetics of Space' . However, Ariane Pauls does not focus on the psychologically laden dialectics of inside and outside, of imaginary and objectively existing spaces, that Bachelard describes in his literary images of space. As a visual artist, she rather focuses on the image production of three-dimensional spaces. How can the image of a space be distinguished from the impression a space leaves?

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