Visions of Reality

Gustav Deutsch and Hanna Schimek

An exhibition accompanying the film Shirley – Visions of Reality (2013; a film by Gustav Deutsch, illusionary painting and color concept by Hanna Schimek), Künstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria, November 6, 2013 to January 5, 2014

Austria 2013–2014

In the course of the three-dimensional, life-sized transformation of 13 paintings by Edward Hopper for the film Shirley – Visions of Reality, pictorial and sculptural artefacts were created that were combined into sets to produce the illusionist reality of the film.

“In the exhibition, these artefacts now taken out of their film context and presented in compilations and setups on the topics of panel painting and replication, dioramas and illusion painting, anamorphotic and metaphoric furniture, symbolic objects and artefacts steeped in history” (www.shirley-visions-of-reality.com).

“The life-size background paintings I have made from Hopper’s works are arranged as walk-through dioramas, making the visitors both observers and actors. The paintings shown in this diorama setup still have the enlargement marks on the edges that remain visible as reference points and that once again debunk the illusion and reveal the machinery behind it” (Hanna Schimek, in Deutsch and Schimek 2013: 110).

Gustav Deutsch, born in 1952 in Vienna, Austria; lives in Vienna.

Hanna Schimek, born in Vienna; lives and works in Vienna and Aegina.