| | | Out of Düsseldorf - German Contemporary Photography
The success of the Dusseldorf photographers in the art world has to do with the precision with which they use their medium. Since World War II, photography has been taught in many places in Germany, but there are only a few schools where it was taught in a non-commercial, artistic way. Essen (Folkwang School) was such a place, but it didn’t become as influential as the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts (Becher class) in which the German tradition of 1920’s Neue Sachlichkeit was taken seriously and used as the base for a new approach to Photography.
Florian Beckers, Gudrun Kemsa and Kris Scholz are artists who have studied either in Essen (Beckers) or in Düsseldorf (Kemsa, Scholz) and each has developed an own distinctive style. While they are working in Düsseldorf today, their art is been exhibited and collected internationally. The OMC Gallery is proud to present a selection of the latest work of these artists and present it for the first time in the USA.
Rolf Goellnitz (May 2007)
Florian Beckers – The Vanishing of the Images (Artist Statement)
My work is about photographic images that emerge from darkness and disappear partly into it again. The world in the images seems to be shrouded in permanently retreating darkness. In some cases the process will be pushed to the limit of visibility. But the vanishing of material recognition as its own character of announcement … is like the showing of it.
In other photographs the vanishing will be defined as a central theme by the content or the subject. Space and time can no longer be registered. This creates a field of tension between illusion of three-dimensionality and surface, between representational and abstraction, between documentary realism and fiction.
In some images the "fragments of reality" will be reduced to an almost complete vanishing of reality. How much must be shown to the observer in order to make a notion of reality visible.
I understand my work as plumbing the the limits of the medium photography. By that I understand an omission, a veiling, a covering, but not the complete elimination of material representation. The things which are just visible serve only to trigger off something that exists beyond reproduction but means the essential.
The process of reduction, of the taking away, of blocking out induces a process of decoding in which the observer is included. The images can thus only disclose themselves to the observer himself. They must be completed by the power of his imagination.
Gudrun Kemsa – The ‘Sousse’ Series 1992 – 2007
…’’In the center of the image ‘Sousse 1’, a man and a woman pause, gazing in the emptiness of the sea.
Their placement in the picture is reminiscent of the great romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich, whose virtuosity transformed his figures into projections of contemplation that evoked the inexplicable nature of human circumstance. At this point one begins to realize that Gudrun Kemsa’s work is all about the process of seeing. The information value of the image as a document might be minimal, but it yet forces the question, what the eye is actually capable to retain?
That, which is actually visible in ‘Sousse 1’ opens manifold paths of cognition. All romantic notions aside, the picture presents the beach as a zone of surreal charm. The terse yellow light, so characteristic of Mediterranean countries, infuses the images with its own sense of artificiality. Those familiar with Gudrun Kemsa’s artistic path might think of the minimalist work of her teacher at the Dusseldorf Academy, David Rabinowitch. His sculptural floor works are directed towards altering perception and reflecting back the physical disposition of the viewer. In this photograph however, it is the ephemeral structures vis-à-vis the two figures that lead to discovery. As objects in the space they are barely comprehensible – concomitantly they reflect back to a time of precognition. Is it about a group of figures that are resting or is it about the intended movement one of the two seated figures will make? Again the viewer is denied an answer. Again it is the movement within the image that initiates the act of viewing and looking’’...
[Text from catalogue Gudrun Kemsa – Moving images by Christoph Schaden]
Kris Scholz – The ‘NO – Series’
In his latest work called NO-Series, Kris Scholz extends his Photographs by using diverse NO-statements, being integrated in the images.
The text creates an irritating component within the context of the image. It is an addition, which is working as a reflection and outlook at the same time.
The double meaning of the statement does not allow creating an unambiguous link between the viewer, the artist and the work.
For example ‘No Crusade’ is showing the wooden beams of a pier in this case those of the Santa Monica Pier in California. The term crusade connects the image of the pier equally with the questionable pleasure of mass tourism as with the fact that this term has been reestablished again into current politics by the present US American President.
The NO implicates the rejection of both levels of significance whether it’s the tourism industry and its sites, here documented by an image of the Santa Monica pier beams washed around by the waves of the Pacific or the world sight of an improper arguing Politician.
In his NO Series Kris Scholz is delivering images from different continents: Europe, North- and South America and Africa. With the images he is risking a fundamental confession and combines his views of the world with his opinions about the world.
His statement:" Once in a while you have to say NO, even if you don’t have to offer a better solution" illustrates that the significance of an artist shouldn’t be limited to create decoration for museum walls.
[Text from catalogue – my vision - Ideas for the world of tomorrow – by Huber / Gisbourne]
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