Im Auge

»Within a single, uncut shot, we see a pair of eyes making the gradual transition from waking to sleeping«, thus reads the artist's comment on the work. The viewer finds himself confronted with a close-up of two eyes, which slowly withdraw from his gaze in the process of falling asleep. This transition from waking to sleeping causes a fundamental change in the observational role: without his having a hand in the matter, the viewer is transformed from partner into voyeur, from a collaborator into an observer.

In a poetical and simple manner, Grčić creates a precise reflection about the medium which she is utilizing, by transforming the tautology between visual medium and visual content (video – Lat. 'I see') into the opposite. In reminiscence of Walter Benjamin, who described the experience of being photographed as that of a lack of a response from the camera to one's own gaze, Grčić projects this proportion of forces onto the viewer, whose look remains unanswered. Im Auge combines Grčić's interest in evanescent and transitory moments with an exploration of the relationship between observer and observed, passivity and activity, autonomy and dependence. (Dorothée Brill)