GLOBAL COLLECTORS ART PRIZE | MASTERS DEFINING THE FUTURE OF ART

Biography

Ursa Schoepper first completed her studies in Natural Science with a state examination. In addition, she completed studies in cultural management, with a state examination and a concentration in fine arts and new media. In her Agentur für Virtuelle Denkraeume, she worked as a cultural manager.

In 2001, she was awarded the Media Promotion Prize of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia for „Das Museum der abwesenden Bilder“.

Since 2003, Ursa Schöpper has been working primarily as a photographic artist. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally, and she is the recipient of notable awards.

Artist Statement

"One day, artists will work with capacitors, resistors, and semiconductors just as they work today with brushes, violins, and refuse." Nam June Paik

My artistic work is conceptual, using photographic material, a light image and a data image. The artistic roots lie in the visual arts and a background in the natural sciences. I am not a photographer in the classical sense. I use photographic material as a tool. The resulting artworks ultimately serve as a metaphor for opportunity arising from change, from transformation. They point to further possibilities, to something that exists as potential within the realm of the possible. They are virtual, in that the artistic outcome is potentially contained within digital photography.

As a creative individual, a being composed of body, mind, and soul, I am part of a complex social system that I first perceive with open eyes before grasping it analytically with my intellect. Sensory perception precedes intellectual understanding. To be in the world means perceiving with all one’s senses. I scan my surroundings with my eyes and connect my perceptions with themes and motifs that resonate within me.

In my experimental photographic art, physiological vision plays a subordinate role in the creation of a work. What matters is the inward gaze: the imagination. It is not about a finished work, but about the unfolding of an idea through the process. Thinking free from the constraints of reason. Reordering through experimentation.

To arrive at new perspectives, it sometimes helps to metaphorically dismantle familiar ways of seeing. A digital experimental photograph is thus not merely a mental construct, but something perceived that has been made visible. My photographic art is a creative balancing act between photographic technique and my artistic statement, a statement that conceptually draws upon photographic material for its expression.

Ultimately, my photographic art does not point to a reality outside of art but possesses its own plane of reality. It is not the premonition of an idea within the realm of the senses, but a sensory reality in its own right. Yet the beauty of experimental art lies in the fact that the value of an idea cannot be calculated mathematically. While digital tools operate according to an "either-or" code, creativity and innovation follow a "both-and" logic.

If one considers digital experimental photography in a way comparable to painting, it comes to life in its appearance, in the relationship between the viewer, their sensory perception, and the object, the meaning of the image. The artist makes possible what the viewer realizes through the act of seeing; this is termed "productive seeing." The digitally stored and simulated image takes shape through subjective viewing.

The image lives in its mode of appearance, or more precisely, in the interplay between the viewer, their sensory perception, and the image object itself, with its inherent meaning. The autonomy of the image leads to an autonomy of seeing. A distinction must be made between seeing something new and the possibility of seeing something in a novel way, discovering new structures, new forms, and new connections or interrelationships.

This making visible of things does not reveal another world, but rather fosters a different attitude toward the world. In dialogue with the artwork, one’s own experiences can be reinterpreted through the act of perception. It is not the photograph itself that constitutes art, but rather the artistic idea expressed within it. Intellectual and artistic activity, as a conscious act, does not yield a result; rather, it is the result.

And last but not least, it remains important that art and artists are not misused for ideological purposes that require validation. When artists allow themselves to be instrumentalized to underpin specific social views, they abandon their essential role as artists. For a serious artist, creating art is not merely a matter of unconscious self-expression but a way of being in the world, a holistic engagement with one’s environment.

Moreover, the artist exists within a state of constant process. Art, including experimental digital photography, must remain free from expediency. Otherwise, it becomes design, a term used here without any pejorative implication.

@ Ursa Schoepper

https://virtuelledenkraeume.de
https://www.artmarketexperts.com/art-news-and-features/ursa-schoepper
https://www.contemporary-art-collectors.com/interviews/ursa-schoepper
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https://artitious.com/artist/ursa-schoepper