Ines Tancre

Biography

Ines Tancré – born in Germany – lives and works at present in Vienna, Austria.

She studied Philosophy, Linguistics, Germanic Studies and Theater in Munich, Madrid and Bonn and finished with a PhD in Lingustics. Shortly after began her nomade lifestyle as a diplomat’s wife. Her husband’s postings lead her to live in Iran, Korea, Sierra Leone, Canada, Norway, Egypt, Italy and the USA.

Throughout her private and professional life creativity had been a major factor. From 1995 on -inspired by her stay in Rome – art became a priority. In her descriptive as well as inquisitive work she combines philosophical and linguistic subjects with the many images of life in different countries and cultures.

Statement

The experience I made  when moving from one country and culture to another is always the same: one starts comparing the new with the old, followed by the process of overlapping of the two and finally the new is perceived on the background of the past. This procedure of “critique” –meaning “differentiation” – provokes fresh views and new values. The layering of pictures, the tension between surface structures and the underlying truth, the enigma, the secret and  the haziness of images fascinate me.  I use the  reality of photography  as a base for estrangement effects leading to images with their own new meaning. Photographies are “melted” by undergoing a printing or transfer process, some are colored and combined in collages, others are appearing in context with words and/or numbers. Recent work includes acrylic paintings on canvas. Layers of paint are applied and washed off to produce a surface of blurred transparency. The topic of my work is the phenomenon of perception: the way we are seeing and perceiving , how we differenciate – it is dealing with the question of “being different” as well as the subject of “Identity and Duality”.