Sehnsucht oder New Romantik

fine art print behind glas, different sizes, 2007-2008, to be continued, edition of 10

In each phase of her creative development, she seems to enter into a kind of silent opposition to what is happening outside, but without particularly emphasizing it. Winkhaus’s themes often reflect a form of ignorance, ambiguity, and even perversity. They thrive on the overarching tendency toward an overly literal interpretation and the personal viewpoint the artist derives from it. The most recent series "New Romantic" therefore evokes Carl Einstein's famous words about Otto Dix: "Perhaps one is, at heart, a painterly reactionary with a left-wing motif." Winkhaus always emphasizes the significance of the first impression – which seems strange for a "modern photographer," especially one who uses such lengthy and elaborate techniques like she does. Someone once sang that life is a terrible place ("Life is a terrible place"), and this is precisely the impression that "New Romantic" conveys: a biting, instinct-driven, almost animalistic sense of alienation. Scenes you can almost smell, that stir you, unforgettable... Tina is a provocative artist: she likes to show you what you don't want to see. In this series, she is so concerned with the ugly that it almost becomes like a creed. Or, as Otto Dix himself once said: "I am not so much trying to be a representative of the ugly. Everything I have seen so far is beautiful..." Winkhaus has obviously succeeded in capturing a primal feeling of worry, fascination, and disgust, a sense of disproportion and strangeness of both the whole situation and the characteristics and gestures of "important" people, before the routine gaze makes the scene appear acceptable. Still, she manages to combine the intensity of the first impression with the consistent design she has mastered (composition, post-production, and the merging of dozens of layers in Photoshop, the demanding production of dozens, if not hundreds, of large images that were shot separately beforehand). The creation of her work is always based on a tug-of-war or contradiction, and "New Romantic" is as logical as a continuation can be: quick reactions or simply presented, almost caricatured themes, presented in the most lavish, enduring, and historically dignified way imaginable. A colossal ironic discrepancy between technique and content; a portrait of the 21st century, captured with the gaze of the 15th or 16th century...

Winkhaus' images are an exaggerated representation of reality, but they are by no means glorifying or destructive. What they seem to say is not "These are the victims," but (as Goya wrote in one of his works) "I have seen it" and "This is how it was." And who else would dare to carry this message in such a magnificent, almost iconic way, since the inglorious death of the great and controversial collaborator R. W. Fassbinder? No one. How romantic.

Text: Eugen Taran