Connie Liebschner, recently graduated from Loughborough University. During the degree show at the Old Truman Brewery, London, in July, her well-developed work caught the eyes of five jurors, including myself. We were selecting one artist and one artist collective to win the 2016 Free Range Award. Although she did not attain the prize, her work was highly regarded for its artistic merit and presentation.
Liebschner explores the unusual interplay between light and domestic spaces, utilising a mixture of both digital photographic and traditional screen print techniques. “I was entranced by the gentle dance of light, bathing and immersing each surface with warmth and glow. During these moments, feelings of nostalgia were evoked, which in turn conjured distant memories.” (Liebschner, 2016)
Her process-led investigation, questioned how solitude and the ephemeral nature of fleeting moments might best be captured. Liebschner's main device is the camera, a fast paced, accurate tool, traditionally associated with its ability to factually document real life, which she deploys, expressing her vision. She acknowledges the post-modern theories of Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin, who both recognised that the photograph was unable to copy reality despite its visual accuracy, since the pictures are contextually removed from the time they were initially taken. Both Barthes and Benjamin extensively discussed this topic, each of them holding a different view. Barthes explored how his senses and memory were altered through the photograph, whereas, Benjamin argued that originality and aura were qualities a photograph can reproduced.
Liebschner herself was dissatisfied by the apparatus' inability to evoke the emotions harboured in real time, encountering similar challenges with her preliminary imagery as some elements of the subject’s contextual framework were absent. However, when she began to edit, manipulate and layer the photos, she was finally able to capture their essence. Liebschner calls her approach “an implicit irony”, turning the peaceful, transitory moments she attempted to trace and capture into public experiences
Born in 1993, Connie Liebschner completed her Foundation in Art & Design, at Stroud College, Gloucestershire in 2012. She studied at Loughborough University from 2013 - 2016, attaining her BA (hon) Fine Art Degree, and participated at a number of university exhibitions as part of the curriculum. Recently she has been awarded a residency with the Surface Gallery's East Midlands Graduation Programme.
©Connie Liebschner and Renée Pfister. All rights reserved.
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H700 mm x W350 mm