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"Reconstruction and Simulation"
L.A. Galerie Lothar AlbrechtDomstrasse 6 60311 Frankfurt GERMANY
T: + 49 – 69 – 288687 e-mail: Jun 13 – August 22, 2015 |
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 Joan Fontcuberta: Aus der Serie Herbarium Bifilia Mastegata, 1982 sw Foto, ca. 26 x 21 cm |
 Robert F. Hammerstiel, Auf-Decken, 1994, C-Print auf Aluminium, ca. 140 x 170 cm |
 Calum Colvin, Napoleon, 2002 |
You and your friends are cordially invited to the opening on Saturday, June 13th, 2015, from 11 am to 6 pm.
Photographers' artistic examination of fiction and documentation again is the theme of our new exhibition Reconstruction and Simulation, as it was in one of our group exhibitions in 1999, Constructed Reality.
It would be no exaggeration to say that the contemporary vision has to a large extent been trained by photography and cinema. These two media have been erected in reference to realism and, at the same time, as a refuge of illusion. While on the one hand, from the very dawn of the medium people focused on its mechanical nature (and hence its inherent objectivity), from its very early days it was also open to manipulation and photomontage. Rejlander and Robinson produced their first works, cutting and combining parts of a different negative, in the 1850s. Fading Away, one of Robinson's best known works, dates from 1858 and was a cause for rejection and controversy when its author demonstrated, at a lecture to the Royal Photographic Society, the system he had used to combine the five constituent negatives. Robinson subsequently decided that it was better to keep the system secret and to let the audience enjoy the work. Méliès for his part, produced his first rigged films in 1896, a year after the introduction of the cinematograph, using the new medium to film his Theatre Houdini’s magic show.
It is difficult today to see Méliès innocent tricks without a benevolent smile. The crudeness of the deceit is stunning. But it goes to reinforce the historical nature of realism. What for us is an evident manipulation was a source of astonishment to the inexperienced eye of the spectators of his time.
In their manipulations, both Robinson and Méliès were operating in the post-photographic and post-cinematic; the former by combining negatives or positives, the latter by means of superimposition. But however important these techniques of manipulation were; they can sometimes blind us to another, much simpler, factor: the intervention in the "pro-photographic" or "pro-cinematic": the construction or manipulation of scenarios or situations to match the guidelines of presentation. It was not merely a question of reflecting the real, as the camera always does, but of making that real identify with a reality of another type, of introducing into a culture of the gaze. (…)
Ramon Esparza ©, is Faculty member at the University of the Basque Country; Faculty of Social Sciences and Communication
The text is from his essay “The World we Live In”
News (Construced Juni 2015)
Oliver Boberg
Nebenan, Neuer Kunstverein Gießen, 30.5 – 11.7.2015
Huang Min
China 8, NRW-Forum, Düsseldorf 30.5 - 11.7.2015
Ma Jun
Kangxi, Hetjens Museum, Düsseldorf, 19.7.-8.11.2015
Julian Faulhaber
LDPE, Friedrich-Hundt-Gesellschaft, Statmuseum Münster, 30.8. - 8.11.2015
Ken Lum
Coming Soon, Ein Projekt der Kunsthalle Wien am Karsplatz, 21.3-27.10.2105
Liu Ding
From a Poem to the Sunset
Daimler Art Collection, Stuttgart/Berlin 1.5 – 30.8.2015
Peter Bialobrzeski
Zoom: Architektur und Stadt im Bild, Pinakothek der Moderne, München, 2.4-21.6.2015
Photographers' artistic examination of fiction and documentation again is the theme of our new exhibition Reconstruction and Simulation, as it was in one of our group exhibitions in 1999, Constructed Reality.
It would be no exaggeration to say that the contemporary vision has to a large extent been trained by photography and cinema. These two media have been erected in reference to realism and, at the same time, as a refuge of illusion. While on the one hand, from the very dawn of the medium people focused on its mechanical nature (and hence its inherent objectivity), from its very early days it was also open to manipulation and photomontage. Rejlander and Robinson produced their first works, cutting and combining parts of a different negative, in the 1850s. Fading Away, one of Robinson's best known works, dates from 1858 and was a cause for rejection and controversy when its author demonstrated, at a lecture to the Royal Photographic Society, the system he had used to combine the five constituent negatives. Robinson subsequently decided that it was better to keep the system secret and to let the audience enjoy the work. Méliès for his part, produced his first rigged films in 1896, a year after the introduction of the cinematograph, using the new medium to film his Theatre Houdini’s magic show.
It is difficult today to see Méliès innocent tricks without a benevolent smile. The crudeness of the deceit is stunning. But it goes to reinforce the historical nature of realism. What for us is an evident manipulation was a source of astonishment to the inexperienced eye of the spectators of his time.
In their manipulations, both Robinson and Méliès were operating in the post-photographic and post-cinematic; the former by combining negatives or positives, the latter by means of superimposition. But however important these techniques of manipulation were; they can sometimes blind us to another, much simpler, factor: the intervention in the "pro-photographic" or "pro-cinematic": the construction or manipulation of scenarios or situations to match the guidelines of presentation. It was not merely a question of reflecting the real, as the camera always does, but of making that real identify with a reality of another type, of introducing into a culture of the gaze. (…)
Ramon Esparza ©, is Faculty member at the University of the Basque Country; Faculty of Social Sciences and Communication
The text is from his essay “The World we Live In”
News (Construced Juni 2015)
Oliver Boberg
Nebenan, Neuer Kunstverein Gießen, 30.5 – 11.7.2015
Huang Min
China 8, NRW-Forum, Düsseldorf 30.5 - 11.7.2015
Ma Jun
Kangxi, Hetjens Museum, Düsseldorf, 19.7.-8.11.2015
Julian Faulhaber
LDPE, Friedrich-Hundt-Gesellschaft, Statmuseum Münster, 30.8. - 8.11.2015
Ken Lum
Coming Soon, Ein Projekt der Kunsthalle Wien am Karsplatz, 21.3-27.10.2105
Liu Ding
From a Poem to the Sunset
Daimler Art Collection, Stuttgart/Berlin 1.5 – 30.8.2015
Peter Bialobrzeski
Zoom: Architektur und Stadt im Bild, Pinakothek der Moderne, München, 2.4-21.6.2015
 Oliver Boberg, Bridge, 2003, DVD projection, 30-minute loop |
 Ken Probst, Troy Kisses Enrique’s Navel, 1994, sw Foto, ca. 28 x 36 cm. |
Oliver Boberg| Lorca diCorcia | Joan Fontcuberta | Erwin Wurm | |
opening :
Saturday, June 13th, 2015, from 11 am to 6
mpefm
GERMANY art press release
Opening hours :
Tuesday through Friday 12:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Saturday 11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
and by appointment
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