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Katrin Amft | Marc Grümmert | Tim Kellner | Thanh Long | Knut Wolfgang Maron | Janet Riedel | Heidi Schneekloth | Michael Strauss | Janet Zeugner

In the exhibition series "Refusal of Reality - Subjective positions in contemporary photography" nine photographers initiate a paradigm shift in the current photography discourse.

Although all the artists work in different ways and their artwork finds different expressions - from light painting and chemigrams to subjective photographic works - they all follow the idea of "Subjective Photography".

By dealing with the radical postions of the vanguard art of the twenties and the "Subjective Photography" of the fifties and sixties until today they expand the photographic thinking and formulate a personal point of view, which shows the relationship between the photographer and the world.

Despite different production methods and visual strategies the works are united by the common element of the subjective view of reality. The artists adopt a contraposition to a documentary and realistic photography and find a more metaphoric, lyric, narrative and subjective approach.

Although a number of individual artists work in a subjective context, for the first time a group has formed, which will bring its positions forward in the following three years in Germany and overseas.

The refusal of a represented reality opens the way to the real.

"We do not have a consciousness that, as idealism would have it, constitutes things. Nor do things proceed our consciousness, as realism would have it [...] with our body, with our senses, with our gaze and our ability to understand and to use language, we are provided with the measuring tools to assess being ("das Sein"), and with dimensions to which we can relate it to, however, we are not equipped with a relationship of direct equivalencies or immanence. Our perception of the world and of its history is the practice of this process of taking measures and the investigation of its discrepancies in relation to our norms." (Merleau-Ponty)

From: Andreas Steffens, Angesichts. In: Absage an die Wirklichkeit - Subjektive Positionen zeitgenössischer Fotografie. Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld 2006, p. 145f.

Publication

The corresponding trilingual catalogue is published by KERBER edition young art. www.kerber-verlag.de. For detailed information about the artists and their work please have a look at our website. www.absageandiewirklichkeit.de .

Opening:

Greeting by Prof. Dr. Hans-Egbert Schröder, chairman of the Neuer Sächsischer Kunstverein

Introduction by Dr. Michael Neumann and Oliver Geisler, literary scholars at the University of Dresden, Germany

with following Artist Talk