(deutsche Version)

The portraitwork of Michael Walter is a matter of imprints, in philosophical sense as well as in practice.

He works in a technique that oscillates between documentation and artistic craft and creation.

Starting off with a photographic picture of a person, the portrait unfolds through a series of reproduction-processes, during which the image is transformed, refined and created step by step. First in the computer, then in copy-procedures, then onto the canvas by physically pressing the toner into it by the aid of nitrosolvent. From this point on the more traditional craft of painting takes over, working with the brush on top of the print.

Each step is a matter of choices, choices made by the artist based on meetings with the person to be portrayed.

Little by little the documentary connotations of the original photo dissolves as if time is sealed. The portraits take on the character of a new iconography. Using this rare technique the final portrait is as much a unique creation, a construct of an identity-position.

In this sense, the technique of Michael Walter mirrors the intersubjective expression that a portrait will always be. Each portrait is a product of a meeting between the artist and the person portrayed, a merging between how you would like to present yourself and the artists interest in you.

The focus of Michael Walter is not necessarily to produce a true representation of the person he portrays, or to express his or her real essence, but just as much to work with the desires of making a mark, of creating a persona, as identity and as picture. Seen in this way, the portrait instead almost functions as a prototyp, an image through which you can create yourself.

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