ICUL CTION Special Edition ART A C o n t e m p o r a r y A r t R e v i e w Special Issue like your works to be understood? Moreover, are you particularly interested in arousing emotions that goesbeyond the realm of visual perception? Claudia Grünig: My pictures are departure and at the same time retreat into my own world. By going beyond visual perception, I come close to the truth. It corresponds to my form of being and experiencing. What the viewer can - and wants to - find in my pictures and whether I arouse emotions in him, lies solely in himself. The possible comprehensibility of my visualization presupposes a look at oneself. I invite the viewer to follow me. I have always been interested in ambivalence in the image - the rupture that lies in the simultaneity of the illusion of a vague promise and its dissolution when the gaze leaves the surface. In my photographic works, the action is at times reminiscent of whimsical skip tracing. The great significance of the action, and its importance, is asserted solely by the people depicted. In contrast to this, there is no possibility of interpretation. I like to remove the burden of meaningful action from my characters. Possibly straw is spun into gold here. There are no reliable clues to the meaning of what is happening. Since the beginning of my artistic activity, I have been preoccupied with themes of identity and authenticity. I often question the relationship between illusion and reality. Thus arose again and again, from very different points of view, works and cycles under the theme - reality and its double, reality and imitation, reality and forgery as well as illusion and reality. By consistently breaking through the reality of the medium of photography and a well thought-out pictorial composition of reality based on it, I lead the viewer into a