Artist: Martin Klimas – An In-Between State

Martin Klimas’ photographs of figurines in mid-destruction.  Klimas explains:

Porcelain Figurines

From a height of three meters, porcelain figurines are dropped on the ground, and the sound they make when they hit trips the shutter release.  The result:  razor sharp images of disturbing beauty – temporary sculptures made visible to the human eye by high-speed photography technology.  The porcelain statuette bursting into pieces isn’t what really captures the attention; the fascination lies in the genesis of a dynamic figure that replaces the static pose.  In contrast to the inertness of the intact kitsch figurines Klimas started out with, the photographs of their destruction possess a powerfuly narative character.

In my pictures you see the world through the eye of a high-speed camera. This way of seeing provides for us something that we normally cannot see, this moment of transformation can really only be imagined by us. I provide a way for us to see this action differently. It is an in-between state. A state where rest and motion can exist together. I hope this situation can be applied and give us thought in our everyday world.

When you mean the concept of automating the process of working and only to install a set way that produces the pictures—yes, that is comparable to Pollock. But my big teachers are Eadweard Muybridge and Harold Edgerton. The part “by chance,” it is a real photographic image because there is not manipulation in it and it shows a singular moment. The “design” part is the selection, the size of printing, the colors and the framing. Anything prior to that is left up to chance.