​Thinking architecturally rather than photographically, Gabriele Viertel explores perception, atmosphere and materiality through images and spatial interventions.

 

Rather than documenting the visible world, her work investigates moments in which representation begins to dissolve into ambiguity, revealing subtle tensions between presence and absence, structure and atmosphere. Familiar points of orientation, including scale and spatial reference, are often withheld, allowing perception to unfold as an open and unstable process.

 

Initially trained in engineering, Viertel developed an early sensitivity to construction, material behaviour and spatial logic. Subsequent professional experiences within visual culture sharpened her awareness of perception and the ways images shape our understanding of reality.

 

An earlier body of work, centred on photographing human figures underwater, explored the transformation of perception through distortion, suspension and altered states of visibility. While this series forms a completed chapter within her oeuvre, it established many of the questions that continue to inform her practice today.

 

Whether working with photography or space, Viertel is interested in situations in which perception becomes aware of itself. Her practice often moves between architectural precision and sensory uncertainty, where scale, orientation and material presence remain fluid.

 

Space before decoration.

Light before furnishing.

Perception before style.

 

 

Working through acts of observation, reduction and transformation, she creates images and spatial situations that invite viewers to encounter the world not as a fixed reality, but as an ongoing perceptual experience.