Wolfgang Bartels Ice Dance ( I ), Disko Island, Greenland, 2009 40 x 50 cm, silver gelatin baryta print
FAGUS Galerie Hannoversche Str. 58 31061 Alfeld Allemagne
Taken on a journey to West-Greenlandic Disko-Bay, the remains of a shattered iceberg land on the lava beach of Disko Island and in the short moment of motionlessness result in the grace of a Japanese calligraphy. In the background a rolling in wave is breaking, becomes blurred to an abstract shape as if created by a drypoint etching. The tension is generated by the contrast of these elements comprising mysticism and abstraction in one picture. Robert Haeusser called this photograph a masterpiece.
© Wolfgang Bartels, Chinatown in Snowdrift (I), Montréal, Canada, 2002, 11x14" silver gelatin baryta print
Photographer Wolfgang Bartels, born in 1948 in Hannover, Germany, shows his work "Between Mysticism and Abstraction" in the Fagus Gallery of the UNESCO World Heritage Fagus Works in Alfeld / Leine, Germany. His sensitive pictures, evolving over decades have developed into an affair of the heart. Bartels not only exposes objects and situations, but is looking for enigmatic moods, conveying a third dimension which evokes emotion, touch mysticism and / or abstraction, suggesting mysterious situations that do not open up at first sight, often provoking fundamental existential questions and transporting spiritual aspects, goes into metaphysics, touches lyrically or poetically. These threads lead through his photographic work, perhaps deriving/developing during which time he made intensive research on the music and life of the great mystic and probably most important composer of all times, Johann Sebastian Bach.
© Wolfgang Bartels, God's Hand, Disko Island, Greenland, 2009 40 x 50 cm, silver gelatin baryta print
Bartels' striving for abstraction is expressed in the elimination of redundant elements, a reduction to essentials, or "to get rid of the gossip" as the great photographer Robert Haeusser would express it and who sees in Bartels’ photography a kinship to his own work.
Bartels has divided the exhibition composition into thematic clusters, systematically approaching the themes as in “Man in mystic Context," "Man in abstract Surrounding," "Mystic Landscapes," "Plants and Trees between Mysticism and Abstraction," to name only some of the 11 workgroups.
Bartels remains committed to analogue photography, enlarging his mostly black + white negatives with skill and dedication on fibre-based silver gelatin paper, meanwhile becoming very rare. His photographs have been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums in Germany and abroad.
Photography © Wolfgang Bartels