Untitled, 2000

Gregor Zivia's photographs depict the artist as the only actor in accurately choreographed situations, in the midst of interiors created by him for the purpose. Unlike snapshots, which show an action as a moment from a series of movements frozen in time, Zivia's photographs assert that moment as stable and fixed. What seems to be the performer's movement fixed on film is actually no action, but a state generating sculptural qualities. Zivia is also a painter. All of his photographs feature oil paintings which he has produced over the last seven years. The interiors that form the setting of his photographs also always put a spotlight on his paintings. These are on a par with the architecture and the actor in the arrangement, staged as components of the photographs and which have a share in determining the colours, light and form. The background of every photograph is a copy of the entrance gate of Zivia's parents' house in Vienna. It is precisely this integration of biographical details, of painting, sculpture, installation and performance into a kind of imaginary living space, that reveals the artist's uncanny artistic subtlety.