Opening: September 18, 2025 6:00pm
Exhibition from September 18-25, 2025. 1-7pm or by appointment.
In Past:Present, Austin Settle moves beyond mere retrospection. It is an exhibition about how the material of memory, in the moment of its disruption, speaks a new language. An exhibition about time, without seeking to depict the temporal. About memory, without recalling a narrative. About images which, through Settle’s process, reveal more than they are.
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PRESS RELEASE
Austin Settle | Past:Present
An Exhibition of Expanded Photography
Curator: Esther Hladik
Opening Reception: September 18, 2025, 6:00pm
Exhibition Dates: September 18–25, 2025
Gallery Hours: 1–7pm daily, or by appointment
Venue: Frei.Haus, Vienna
American-born, Vienna-based artist Austin Settle presents Past:Present, a solo exhibition exploringthe material nature of memory through his distinctive practice of "Expanded Photography." Workingentirely with analog processes, Settle transforms found color transparencies and family archivematerials into sculptural photographic works that challenge conventional boundaries betweenphotography, painting, and time-based media.
Born in California in 1980, Settle studied Art History at UC Santa Barbara before settling in Viennawhere his unique pictorial language crystallized. What began as experiments with in-camera multi-exposures evolved into direct manipulation of photographic materials—sculpting emulsion layers,applying dyes, scratching, and burning film surfaces until they become corporeal canvases bearingwitness to physical gesture and temporal intervention.
Settle describes himself as a "treasure hunter," rescuing discarded family photographs—vacationslides from the 1960s and '70s, anonymous smiles captured by unknown cameras—and subjectingthem to rigorous material processes. This practice creates what he terms "haptic surfaces evokingprisms, ice fields, rock formations and stratigraphic layers," transforming indexical documents intoiconic abstractions that resist representational narratives.
The works in Past:Present reveal what curator Esther Hladik describes as photography's capacity to"speak a new language" in the moment of its disruption. Pieces like A Fragment of Lost Time I presentfaded cityscapes with emulsion layers breaking open like tectonic plates, while Past Present Prismtransforms Alpine panoramas into wounded surfaces marked by burn blisters. These interventionsembody what Settle calls "vision-force"—a direct, embodied engagement with photographicmateriality that bypasses conventional representation.
Drawing on François Laruelle's concept of "non-photography"—which treats photography not asrepresentation but as thought-practice existing immanently within the Real—Settle's images, with theirjagged edges and smooth, glacial surfaces, initially appear as nonrepresentational paintings. Onlycloser examination reveals their photographic origins: color transparencies whose emulsion layers havebeen carved and striated, exposing glimpses of the color spectrum and creating what theoristsdescribe as "temporal chronotopes" where past and present collide.
This approach positions Settle as processor rather than conventional photographer, embodying a"performative stance" that reclaims agency from the photographic apparatus. His practice operates asconscious resistance to digital image culture's immateriality, positioning analog manipulation as acritical return to photography's material roots while opening space for latent possibilities to emergethrough accumulated temporal layers.
Past:Present reveals how the material of memory, in the moment of its disruption, speaks more than itoriginally contained—functioning as both archaeological excavation and future-oriented speculation.All works are C-Prints on Fujiflex II paper mounted on aluminum, created from color transparencies that are scanned but never digitally manipulated.
For press inquiries and high-resolution images: studio@austinsettle.net
Gallery Information:Frei.Haus
Wiedner Hauptstraße 30
1040 Vienna, Austria