Out of Season

The series „Out of Season“ explores touristic landscapes and places outside their function as a stage-setting for holidaymakers. What happens to these places after all the “guests” have left? Do they find back to their originality or have they been changed in such a way that the yearly end of the “high season” leaves these places without significance until the next season starts? In the melancholic time when they retreat into solitude does the authenticity resurface or is it forever lost in a tribute to functionality in the service of profiteering? I grew up in a small lakeside village in the Austrian Salzkammergut where the “high time” of touristic season is a short period in the alpine summer. The transition from bustling, crowded, noisy and festive to clearing up, storing away and retreating into silence has always struck me as utterly melancholic. So I started this series under the motto of Ahmet Rasim's quote “ The beauty of a landscape lies in its melancholy” and tried to show this melancholy in an abstract and painterly way. The work is in progress since 2004 shot analogue and digital so far in Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Croatia. It has been exhibited in Italy, Germany and Austria.