V&A/Vicky Donner is pleased to present Principle Matter, a photographic installation by Katja Mater opening on October 15th, 2008.

In Principle Matter, Katja Mater turns the lens of photography on itself by employing technical conventions like exposure, depth of field and color to investigate her singular subjects. Rather than use photography solely as a transparent medium though, Mater “tries to make viewers consider photography while simultaneously experiencing it”. The objects and spaces she chooses to represent in her images often reveal archetypal subjects of art like oversimplified figures, landscapes, and books or still lifes. Mater’s formalist approach seems counter-intuitive to her goal of experiential art: she has a strict conceptual processes that refuses to subvert the art object. In Principle Matter, finite rules of photographic science don¹t seem to constrain Mater’s artistic ability, but rather appear to unleash it.