Introduction of Tasja Langebach

Condensed Light-Time-Constellations

– this is how Lisa Weber's handling of moving pictures is best described. However, there is more to Lisa Weber's art: her videos and stills deal with the moments in between. Minimalistically and in strict formal order Lisa Weber directs our glance to these moments where our sensitive perception only realizes every day banalities, moments worn by thousandfold repetition that only reach us superficially. However, these moments, in an almost universal sense, point out a reality beyond the banalities of everyday life. If we allow ourselves to open up to them we are rewarded, may be, with a view beyond the horizon. Opening up in this context means to open our eyes for the small details, and exposing ourselves totally to the course of time as the inner structure of the works of art. For her videos Lisa Weber chooses a strict framing based on time as the structural medium. Equally, she builds on natural phenomena as the internal guideline of a picture. Light, the oldest factor to measure time, takes a key position here. Hardly any other natural phenomenon manages to manifest as clearly the passing of time as the transitions from day to night or from night to day within sunset or sunrise.

Lisa Weber dedicates various videos to this phenomenon – and each time uses different foci. twili ght september 2010 (30 sunsets) and twili ght september 2012 (30 sunrises) are central pieces for this part of Lisa Weber's work. At the beginnings of both installations there are 30 pictures forming an almost monochrome mosaic of blue hues. This first impression changes with every second you watch the installations. Lisa Weber is documenting a sequence of ten minutes of each sunset on 30 days in september 2010 and each sunrise during 30 days in september 2012. The single pictures follow strict formal criteria and present the same detail during the same time on all the days of a certain month. They are then lined up symmetrically in a wall filling mosaic. The whole picture seems redundant at first sight and then dissolves into little differences evolving in the course of time. Each movement of clouds in the evening/morning sky reveals its singularity at the same time remaining part of a wider movement in the eternal circle of night and day, each moment escaping our control. As the observer is concentrating on the small changes he/she him/herself becomes part of another change. The individual pictures form a chorus of light, which influences the light in the exhibition hall. Cut off from the flow of real time the observer experiences in an eternal loop the ever new moment of world slipping from light to dark or from dark to light. The exhibition hall turns into a place for experiences with a temporality of its own. And it's the artist who gives rhythm and form to the experience – in setting a time structure.

The installation every sunset (on the 50th degree of latit ude) works in a similar way on our feeling of time. For this installation Lisa Weber uses the pictures of webcams round the globe, which are available in the web. For 4 minutes the installation shows a sunset somewhere on the 50th degree of latitude. The picture sequence follows the sunset until the sun has disappeared behind the horizon and then moves on to the next sunset at a different place on the same degree of latitude. It is as if a musical clock is being rewound time and again, always playing the same text to a different melody. The observer from a certain point onwards loses every sense of singularity and his/her usual orientation in time and space. The sun remains the only constancy in this eternal repetition of movement around the globe and connects at the same time singularity with the eternal.

Lisa Weber transports this idea as physical experience into three-dimensionality with one of her first sculptural installation. Small eternity shows 24 light bulbs fixed on a metal ring in regular intervals. The bulbs give different shades of light. One bulb at a time giving its full light while the other 23 bulbs all shine in exact modification, each one a nuance darker than its predecessor. One after the other exting-uishes and then starts up in full brightness again, the whole process forming a continuous circle of light. Each bulb stands for one of the 24 time zones of our planet. The metal ring is slightly tilted and corresponds with the angle of earth's rotation. Simple means render clear what normally is beyond our perception – it's the eternal circle of the earth, the correspondent movements of the earth and the sun. It's the rule of life, similar in all different parts of the earth. Lisa Weber catches these facts and integrates them into a threedimensional body filling space. Time and time dimensions, normally only perceptible as abstract thought but never to be really seen are now transmitted into physical experience. The sculpture synchronizes perception and transforms it into a movement within the sculpture – and permitting the movements of the observer around the sculpture.

Condensed light-time-constellations – Lisa Weber is standing in the tradition of the early impressionists, rethinks their philosophy and transfers it in our times – with the help of contemporary means. The impressionists where guided by the idea that every picture represents the trace of a certain moment. To them a picture stands for just a section of space and time. There is no claim for universal validity. A picture is for them the attempt to depict the moment – seen under the individual conditions of the observer. The term "Impressionism" has its origin in Monet's painting "Impression – soleil levant/Impression- sunrise", which was shown in the first exhibition of the group in the year 1874. And this is only an external reference to the parallels as regards content to the works discussed here. Whereas the impressionist painters had to restrict themselves to a single painting, Lisa Weber uses the possibilities of time-based digital media. She is able to synchronize time or to manipulate the reception of time in accelerating or decelerating its representation.

In still life with bottles and portrait (changing) the artist plays with the possibilities of digital media and achieves an impressive representation of moods rooting in the correspondence of time and light. still life with bottle s shows five bottles of different colours in a seven minute sequence. At first the bottles appear in twilight, slowly the colours appear with the oncoming light. During the day's and the sun's course reflections appear in the glass, the bottles' multicoloured shadows slip across the wall. Linearity in observing time passing is broken by the shadows of clouds reaching over the sun – affecting the pattern of the bottles and their shadow on the wall. Despite all technical design maturity and manipulative influencing control this work also remains still quite close to it´s motive and leaves himself to the moods of nature in her final presentation.

This is also true for the person in portrait (changing): we see a close up of a female face tilted upwards to the camera. Background and face are overexposed, the woman is blinded by the sun. Light extinguishes all outlines and sets the whole scene into hard whites. All depth of focus is drained. Only when the first clouds shift in front of the sun the impression changes: the face gains back colour, lines and structures become visible again, the woman looks relaxed into the camera and becomes visible for the observer. The changed picture now changes the observer's look, too. Less light renders visible a series of details and only then starts the process of interpretation and contact with the scene. Alas, this is not long lasting. The sun comes in fast again and withdraws the scene from us.

What Lisa Weber calls in of the observers again and again, is to get involved in one her work unconventionally predefined time structure and to rethink the positioning of one´s own: How do I perceive my environment, where do I block my possibilities of perception and how do I open my eyes and my mind in changing perspectives. And the best way to refocus the perception is training it in observing the banalities of everyday life. It is not a single picture but the picture in its context of every day impressions. Changing the perspective focuses on things past and things to come – may be things beyond the horizon.

translated from Dr. Beate Blatz