Biography
Katja Mater (*1979 Hoorn NL) is interested in the process of visual perception and the idea of a different or alternative concept of reality. Her practice has a focus on an in-depth investigation of the medium-specific parameters of photography and film. Mater uses time-based optic media to extend the borders of human perception, where illusory spaces appear. These images synthesize time, space and the residue of action while addressing our common understanding of these.
Mater is using photography as a creative, more than a documenting medium, where painting and photography become indistinguishably connected. An image is built up inside the camera on a negative, that is exposed several times during different steps of the making of a drawing or painting. Thereby several moments of reality are fused together. The result is a photo print, which appears three-dimensional, a sandwich of time. The latest work Time is an arrow, Error for example consists of 79 clock-like images that are built up over time, with multiple layers of exposure. The process starts with a drawing of half an analogue clock-face, then the drawing is photographed on two separate negatives. Each one of them is capturing the drawing at several different moments during the making. Katja gradually adds marks to them, turning number into other numbers, so that an ensemble of layered time-markers appears. These two negatives are printed, one normal, one horizontally flipped and are put together, with clocklike images being the result.
Through an examination of space and time, Mater breaks down and layers the named parameters in a single image. Her work is a response to our expectation that photography and film supposedly depicts the reality. The process is an investigation of the possibility and impossibility of photography and Mater makes use of it in a special way. What we can see in her images is not what happens before the camera. Much lays under the surfaces of the image itself.
In 2009, ‘A Study on Colour,’ Mater’s artist book was published by Heden, Den Haag. In 2013, ‘Multiple Densities’ was published by ROMA PUBLICATIONS. And most recent Mater self published ‘Time is an Arrow, Error’.Her work is included in numerous museums and public collections such as the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum M, Leuven; MuZee, Ostende; Fries Museum, Leeuwarden; Centraal Museum, Utrecht and Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, among others.
Her recent solo exhibitions include Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam (2020, 2018); P/////AKT, Amsterdam (2019); Chapelle de la Trinité, Cléguérec (2018); Narva Art Residency, Narva (2018); Helper, New York (2017); Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee (2015) and KIOSK, Ghent (2015). She participated in group exhibitions such as at Museum M, Leuven (2021); Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image imprimée, La Louvière (2021); Västerås konstmuseum, Västerås (2021); Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2020, 2017); Loods 12, Wetteren (2019), A.I.R. Gallery, New York (2019); Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya Museum, Mumbai (2018); Beursschouwburg, Brussels (2018); Marta Herford, Herford (2017); UM Gallery, Prague (2016) and Long Division, Melbourne (2016).