On Travel

Rémy Markowitsch

The processes of defoliation and transillumination are defining aspects of Rémy Markowitsch’s artistic approach. Driven by specific biographies and literature, the artist reveals his research results in photographic transilluminations. Just as the radiology term describes, the respective motif is penetrated and superimposed with a different motif. Photographs shift from an opaque to a lucid state; they overlap one other. Consequently, the representation encourages a simultaneous examination. In the exhibition and book project On Travel (1998–2005), Markowitsch combines the technique of transillumination with quotations from literary and academic publications and adds an audio component to the multilayered visual quotations. With the compilation of photographic and audible found objects from literary and scientific travel accounts, Markowitsch re-charts the topos of the tropics. In a playful manner, he deconstructs the perspective of the white traveler and his encounters with the “foreign,” until he himself has become its subject.