"Calmed self-portraits" is an open project, which I am creating during my travels around the world. The reason behind creating the work was my contact with the boundless, wild spaces – the tranquility and power emanating from steppes, deserts, mountains, oceans... Discovering the world and contemplating the nature allows me to calm down, distance myself and introspect. The cycle belongs to an open project entitled "Emotional self-portraits" and was created in co-operation with Tomasz Śliwiński.
"(...) The infinity of the space spreading in front of our eyes becomes a visual emanation of the centrally situated woman, provoking us to see the subject in strict connection with nature, which evokes peace, contemplation, and inner calmness. The series, which stems from a romantic concept (both in painting and in literature) that presents a close relation between nature and emotions tormenting the character, makes it a legacy, a place which has been found, but which is coherent with the subject. (...) in Calmed Self-Portraits, the stillness seems to be the result of soothing and balance, although the woman is still very static, which is additionally emphasized by the lack of suggestion of any action.”
D. Łuczak, “Subjectivity dispersed in images – Self-Portraits by Magdalena Hueckel”, Fotografia 33/2010
"(…) Due to the amount of photos, the variation is clearly present. But when you start to realise the mental state every picture represent, it immediately becomes more difficult. That is what makes this project so fascinating. The interpretation is open, but closed for easy solutions. The audience has to invest their own experiences to get close to the pictures. This is an extraordinary well made project with the mark good projects often have, the artist has spared herself nothing to make her ideas come through. The idea is simple, the work impressive.”
Johan Otto Weisser “Back of the head and nature-scenes. Calmed self portraits.”, Art critic Fædrelandsvennen, Kristiansand, Norway 2010
"The human being faces the world, placed in the context of a multiplicity of landscapes just as there are the multi-dimensional aspects of the soul to confront. Moving from one setting to another, the subject remains the same and yet… the calm which envelopes the human silhouette indicates that there is an internal revolution, a progression, down the path to a new way of life.”
Wanted Paris Gallery, Paris 2009
"The landscapes she found during her journey discover the unknown which one seeks in melancholy. Contemplation of nature unites with the contemplation of the author’s being. In this way the landscapes she found become a projection of the artistic subject’s emotional condition. A peculiar play with landscape and melancholic mood, which characterizes the Calmed Self-Portraits and Resigned Self-Portraits, places them in modern romantic photography, which is a particularly strong trend in Nordic countries.”
D. Łuczak, “(Re)visions of Magdalena Hueckel”, editorial to the exhibition catalogue "Obsessive self-portraits", Piekary Gallery, Poznań 2009
"The Calmed Self-Portraits cycle comprises colorful (...) pictures, which focus on the relation of the man to the world, and distract the attention away from oneself. The excitement of the Calmed is in its play of visual qualities, the contrast and intimacy of the elements presenting themselves, the attainability and unattainability of the states of nature revealing themselves. (...) When touched by a word, these photographs appear as a pictorial metaphor of a specifically human situation of deficiency/affluence, non-reaching/reaching, longing."
E. Jarosz, “Magda Hueckel: Emotional self-portraits”, editorial to the exhibition catalogue "Emotional self-portraits", Wozownia Gallery, Toruń 2009
TECHNICAL DATA:
Number of works: 9+
Size: 105x70cm | 90x70cm | 80x120cm
Technique: lambda print, dibond