Thomas Wrede, Drive in Theatre, 2009, Lamda Print / Diasec, 140 x 190 cm, Ed.5 +2AP
Galerie Wager + Partner Karl-Marx-Allee 87 10243 Berlin Allemagne
Nature became landscape long ago. Since the Romantic period landscape has furthermore been an aesthetic position. But what is landscape for the modern human being ? The thematic exhibition "Open Landscape" provides a juxtaposition of multigenerational photographic and pictorial approaches to this question. The reference point for all participating artists is the real landscape.
The works of Thomas Wrede and Joseph Schulz increase their charm through friction between photorealistic representation extended through staging and intervention. Wrede, in his series entitled "Real Landscapes" combines the natural beauty of landscape with constructed miniature models. The landscapes photographed in this way appear seductively plausible and exaggerate the romantic projection.
"One dives into these wondrous picture worlds, which bring together longings and anxieties in an astonishingly peaceful manner in the media of photography. That is what constitutes his personal style. The imagination turns into hallucination." (Dr. Sabine M. Schmidt)
Schulz similarly aims for an aesthetic exaggeration and idealisation through digital intervention in his nature photographs of the series "Terraform". Through the elimination of human traces he reconstructs the lost primordial state of nature and creates people's "internal" images of the landscape.
"Josef Schulz is interested in this momentary confusion, the moment when the line between authenticity and construction becomes blurred, when it is no longer obvious which detail in the photograph is genuine and which one has been added digitally, in order to create the artist's subjective ideal.In this manner Schulz gives his answer to the question about the existence of objectivity in a photographed image." (Martin Weigand)