Lukas Gansterer / Clemens Wolf Autoduck

Autoduck, a collaborative project by the photographer Lukas Gansterer (b. Hainburg an der Donau, 1984; lives and works in Vienna and Berlin) and the painter Clemens Wolf (b. Vienna, 1981; lives and works in Vienna), pursues the myth of the superhero. For more than three years, Gansterer shadowed Wolf and his alter ego, a golden duck mask, as they traveled the world. The photographs–Gansterer worked exclusively with an analog camera–include posed situations as well as snapshot-like portraits and landscapes. Gansterer captures brief moments and lends them a tenuous immortality. Given the distinctly provocative touch of the pictures, the viewer can never be sure what is reality and what is staged. The mask that is the constant in the Autoduck series seems to suppress all emotion, and yet, despite its unchanging expression, it conveys a wide variety of moods.