Your name
Kata Geibl
Place of birth
Budapest, Hungary
Place where you live now
Budapest, Hungary, occasionally in The Hague, The Netherlands
3 words to describe you
instinctive, deliberate, enigmatic
Why do you take pictures?
To tell stories.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Through books and movies.
Who are your influences?
Taryn Simon, Mark Fisher, Tarkovsky
What determines the subject matter you choose?
What I find intriguing on a personal level, and then later while the project evolves how to make these topics accessible to the audience.
What impact would you like your art to have?
People making connections that they did not think about before. 
What artwork do you never get bored with?
When it's all about aesthetics and style without any layers so in one word probably niche.
Is there anything you want to add?
no thank you.

Kata Geibl, Photography and Postmodernism

Text by Nadia E Carrizo

How true is all that we see?

In a hyper-consumerist society where inequality and climate crises prevail, while hyperconnected individuals are locked in their individuality, the poetic images of artist Kata Geibl break with the documentary tradition of photography.

Geibl's photographic work is primarily based on global issues such as the neoliberal economy and its implications on contemporary society from a subjective perspective. Drawing on the writings of Mark Fisher and Frederic Jameson on postmodernity, the photographer's work questions the concept of truth or what we take for granted as absolute truth. Above all, her photographs reflect her concern for current social and ethical values.

Her recent project "There is Nothing New Under the Sun”, 2021, her monograph due out this autumn, mixes short personal texts, stories and images that try to understand - and make the viewer question - the savage market and the difficulties that face Millennials. But the artist does not make a direct criticism of the political, economic and current system; rather, she tries to open a playful and self-reflective conversation with the viewer that breaks the fourth wall.

Geibl transfers her personal experiences and memories to her artistic practice, through her writings-both anecdotes and reflections. From the fall of the Soviet Union (she grew up in post communist Budapest) to the Millennials generation, the artist intends to reflect herself and a generation of digital natives who feel frustrated because they cannot reach their high expectations due to the economic crisis and other global events.

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What is challenging about this proposal is that Geibl opts for metaphorical images created to express her feelings about contemporary issues. Through a palette of pastel colors and a calm aesthetic, each page of the project builds a narrative that is not very explicit. For example, the artist includes images of a horse, whose eyes are covered, next to a beehive. That forces the viewer to make a comparison and we quickly notice that the common factor is that both species are under human control.

Geibl has also portrayed a man being blinded by the light, next to him we see a diorama: small establishments built with cardboard are set on fire, while a spotlight illuminates them. From the succession, we can understand that it is the same spotlight that blinds the man, is it also an image created in a studio, is that sky true, is it the sunlight, or is it the artificial light of the spotlight?

Geibl's work carries the discourse of postmodernity and distrust of truth. She proposes that the viewer should be suspicious about what they see. This makes us think about how the concept of truth is in crisis today, a time when social media have given another dimension to fake news. In a world where it is very easy to distort reality, the nature of photography is also in crisis.

What is the role of photography? Instead of communicating through a documentary point of view, the artist decides to create a highly personal work that places her as an observer. Thus, from subjective and metaphorical associations she creates conceptual and experimental images that seem timeless. Geibl plays with the conceptual possibilities of the image and the enormous flexibility of photography as a medium.

Her surprising compositions are the result of a staging that accentuates whatever the artist wishes to express. This is not only a very visual practice, but one that usually has emotional connotations for the viewer. Her photographs seem to hide their content by creating a tension that is challenging for the viewer. In trying to see the images beyond what they say at first glance, Geibl lets the silent mind awaken and build, check, probe and discover hidden feelings and intuitions.

This makes us think about the appeal of ambiguity and the tension it generates. The truth is that ambiguity is a fundamental resource of photography. In the words of art historian Ernst Gombrich, "it is the key to the whole problem of photographic reading". The less obvious the meaning of the image, the more active the viewer's brain will be, and the more the viewers will have to contribute their point of view. It can be read as a succession of different solutions to the conflict between the logical and the aesthetic.

Whatever the message, the important thing is the imagination and the interpretations that everyone can have.

THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN
Project statement

How can we survive in our current growth and success-oriented capitalist system? Can we collectively break the narrative of individualism?

Carefully planned images are mixed with stream-of-consciousness texts. A poetic approach emerges through allegories, personal short stories, and image pairs. The project deals with the rampant individualism that underpins our contemporary social, political, and economic system, and in particular, the environmental impact that it has. My aim with the series is not to lecture, or to lay down a strict story, nor to interpret economic issues. But to take the viewer on a journey. There are no clear answers but instead ambiguous questions. Which we have to ask sooner or later as we are not only heirs of the system but also suffer under it.

kata geibl
@katageibl