Transitaria

A 4 part body of work.

transitaria [tranzita’ri- ] n.
The process of transition from one state to another.

Like the images in Transitaria, not everything is as it first appears. This is an imagined definition of the word which artist Susanne Ramsenthaler herself fabricated as a title to encompass four recent bodies of work. In visual terms, the work examines an encounter with jellyfish and our ambivalent reaction to them, at the same time making a visceral connection back to the more primitive functions of our own bodies.

Dallas M Mechan

Unlike a photographic image, but very much in the tradition of scientific cataloguing, these photograms of jellyfish are closer to an imprint, or trace, signaling aspects of touch and authenticity due to the required presence of the object in the process of creation.
The series Flux consists of large photograms on monochrome paper. Flux is visually chaotic and organic, largely dark in tone and occasionally shot through with light, suggestive of rushing fluids and/or firing synapses.
Each photogram is unique and cannot be repeated or changed in scale, as there is no camera and therefore no negative.
The series Hybrids emphasises the idea of metamorphosis and mutation of life forms. The digital intervention (a simple flip of the viewing plane) transforms images of jellyfish into a new digital species suggesting new habitats, new modes of existence at once simple and sophisticated, while still retaining the connection back to a visceral organic life form.
Breathe is a video piece of 2.5 mins duration which can be shown looped on a screen or monitor or be projected in a viewing space.
The slow and sometimes almost imperceptible movements of the central elements are offset by the ‘breathing’ of the membrane itself.