Wisla Stadion
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- Wisla Stadion
- 1994
- 6 color prints, laminated on polystyrene
- 30 x 45 cm
Josef Dabernig’s photo series from the Wisla football stadium in Krakow stands in the tradition of the artist’s panoramic photographs of sites deprived of any action, which he began in 1989. Dabernig’s predilection for empty places is a significant trope which the artist has also employed in his films as of 1994. Especially the interest in football and football stadiums has been a recurrent motif in his photographs, which also resulted in the production of the film Wisla in 1996. Through the seriality of the photographs, Dabernig creates proto-filmic scenarios that stand for movement even though the sites do not show any people or action. It is the artist’s interest in border zones, into which one can inscribe culturally significant events without directly addressing them. Hence, the photographs do not show architecturally lavish sites, but stadiums in countries such as Poland, Egypt or Armenia, which at the time the photographs were taken had not necessarily been maintained to a high extent. Yet it is the artist’s gaze which regroups the respective locations in order to convey their cultural identity. W.S.