"Seeing is not believing but interpreting. Visual images succeed or fail according to the extent that we interpret them successfully", Nicholas Mirzoeff once commented. In our life experience which is filled with images, we do not always know the full meaning of what we are seeing. Ideologies and interests - including those in advertisements, for example - also operate through pictures and images. Both of these are perceived as having succeeded if we come to know the true significance of them. From the opposite point of view, contemporary artists are now aware of how to use pictures and images to create awareness and to introduce or pinpoint information that is hidden within or behind the reality presented which in fact contains specific interests or concerns. Gabriele Stellbaum, however, is well aware of this fact. Her videos are designed to bring forth an awareness that is hidden within stereotypes and myths of the modern life.

Her work, for example Make My Day (2002), a video with duration of 1 minute and 30 seconds, conveys images of an unavoidable tragic situation. The concept starts from a simple issue, that of viewing something, a passive observation in a specific place where animals are cared for. Inside a glass container, there is in process a performance or presentation being shown to a little girl that is sure to end in death. The child is caught in an overwhelming, perhaps even terrifying, situation. One of the two bears in the midst of the struggle will have to die by drowning in the murky water, leaving behind a deep sense of tragedy, before the fight will end.

There is one important thing to note in any analysis of the forceful yet sensitive images within this work by Stellbaum. Truly a cynical beauty is achieved here. This video presents a situation in which the little girl, the viewer, is imprisoned. The visual images of the bears fighting in the midst of bubbles and foam in a pool of water become educational viewing for the little girl about how to face the difficult struggle of life. The water that fills the visual space seems to represent the limitations inherent in existence that we struggle against; indeed, this is not easy, but this is the place in which we must live and move: a kind of tying into destiny. Does it really have to be like this? Why does it have to be like this for the little girl? Polar bears do not live exclusively in water, but it may just be that the water is the one place the bears can find subsistence and food. This visual story of the struggle to the death for survival and life seems to imply a biased structure of fate that focuses on the gender of the child. The little girl as viewer is a definite construction symbolic of passivity.

Stellbaum is right, I think, we are not necessary believe in the construction of the point of view or perception presented however natural or "perfect" it may appear.

Rizki A. Zaelani

Born on 1962 in Berlin, Germany.
Studied at Hochschule der Kuenste Hamburg and Duesseldorf.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1998 "LAX", Florence Lynch Gallery, New York and Werwerk e.V., Hamburgs.
1999 "Orbiter 2", MOCA Museum for Contemporary Art, Washington D.C. "LOR", Video Project, Pinacoteca Comunale Villa Soranzo, Varallo Pombia, Italy.
2002 "Guinea Pig", Florence Lynch Gallery, New York.
2004 Florence Lynch Gallery, New York.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1998 "The American View" America House, Frankfurt and Berlin.
1999 "The First Austrotel Contemporary Art Fair", Vienna.
2000 "Biohazard", Art Forum Berlin (Florence Lynch Gallery), Berlin.
2000-2001 "Never, Never Land", Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, Tampa.
2001 "The Flatterers", Flat , New York, USA.
2002 "Video Café: About The Mind (Not Everything You Always Wanted To Know)" at Queens Museum of Art, NY.
2003 "The Armory Show", (Florence Lynch Gallery) New York.

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