It is so quiet in Edward Hopper's paintings - and so little going on. Usually only one or two people are standing or sitting there, deeply absorbed, silent. And yet the paintings are full to the brim with feelings and thoughts. No one could paint the melancholy and loneliness of modern man like Hopper. Which is why his paintings are so appealing in their enigmatic significance. What is being thought and felt there?
Gustav Deutsch, the artist, photographer, architect, video and experimental filmmaker born in Vienna in 1952, who is also responsible for the found-footage montage work Film ist..., makes convincing suggestions. His fascinating single-image moving-image crossover Shirley -Visions of Reality tells the fictional biography of the American actress Shirley based on 13 paintings by Hopper, created between 1931 and 1965. Historical sound recordings at the beginning place each of the tableaux vivants, created with exquisite care, in a social, political and/or cultural context. The protagonist's inner monologue characterizes her as an alert and committed contemporary. But while we wait for the second in which the film image coincides with the pre-image, the image content runs parallel. And at every moment you want to say: Just wait! You are so beautiful!
