Teufen's pictures seem to emphatically pursue the question as to what here is already architecture, what is still sculpture, and what is actually photography. In an ironic way, such a catalog of questions is also opened up by Teufen's instal-lation piece Selfiepoint from 2016. The invitation to shoot a selfie with a smartphone and thus practice a central iconic gesture of our time is formulated against the deceptive backdrop of a vast mountain landscape. The picturesque scenery quickly reveals itself to be a fantastically composed mountain of paper spat out from a photocopy machine. Thus, with regard to the real, all the impulses of reassurance and attestation commonly associated with the communication culture of selfies miss the mark." Nevertheless, a certain creative desire for self-reflection remains; this time, however, in front of artificial landscape scenery. The marketing slogan obviously still applies: "You Press the Button, We Do the Rest!" Teufen's installation playfully reminds us that the amateur specific legacy of photography was already applied in the snapshot-like group photos of the students at the Bauhaus, who tested innovative variations of the portrait from the late 1920s onwards with the then new, easy-to-use 35mm camera."
_text extract from the book BAUHAUS AND PHOTOGRAPHY, Text from Prof. Dr. Christoph Schaden
"An expansive compulsion of photography towards the two genres of sculpture and architecture is also characteristic of the artistic works of DOMINIQUE TEUFEN (b. 1975).
Her series of Flashlight Sculptures from 2013 is marked by a rigidly arranged composition. Like architectural models, glass structures made up of cubes, panels, and pyramids are positioned on the stage of a black pedestal or white table. Then something theatrical happens.
"The flashlight goes off and the mirrors reflect the flashlight of the camera onto the surrounding walls. These lights then resonate back onto the mirroring surfaces and connect the perspective forms and lines into an illusion. In that moment, the real is pushed into the background and the flashlight sculpture visualizes itself. Made by the camera, hardly grasped by the eye and only captured by the camera, photography becomes the only witness of the flashlight sculpture's existence."
