Alina Frieske

After its international premiere at the Biennale Images Vevey in 2020, Alina Frieske extends the Abglanz series for Images Gibellina, adapting and composing it specifically for the festival context. Drawing from hundreds of web-sourced fragments, the artist assembles images like mixed puzzle pieces. Her digital collages, meticulous and painterly in spirit, explore multiplicity and the way familiar scenes are reshaped through the endless flow of online imagery. By bringing together finished works, cutouts, and work-in-progress elements, Abglanz reveals a patient act of recomposition, where contours dissolve, and motifs repeat, inviting viewers to question what remains recognisable when images imitate one another.

With her series Abglanz produced as part of her diploma work at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, Alina Frieske offers us the poetry of a German word whose literal translation is impossible. In French, the expression refers to a “pale reflection” or a “distant echo.” For this project, Frieske begins by gathering visuals according to her research on social networks. From a large selection of snapshots and anonymous selfies, the artist extracts fragments that she then rearranges into digital photomontages. These compositions result in a series of portraits and still lifes inspired by the history of painting. By diverting the original intention of the collected images, Frieske raises public awareness of the issue of accessibility and appropriation of personal and intimate information left within everyone’s reach on the internet. Frieske’s warning is of astonishing beauty. While adopting the classical codes of well-known genres, they are updated by the artist thanks to a process off the beaten track.