| | | |  | | | | exhibition view Brooke DiDonato, AS USUAL © CDi 2021 | | | | | | Self-Portraits (From Last Three Decades Of Five) | | | | ... until 21 October 2022 | | | | | | Virage - Manger Tes Yeux, Ici Ment La Ville - Gyptis & Protis | | | | ... until 21 October 2022 | | | | | | As Usual | | | | ... until 14 October 2022 | | | | | | Imanaho / You Can Wake Up Now, The Universe Is Over | | | | ... until 24 March 2023 | | | | | | Champagner im Keller - Wenn Du gehen musst willst Du doch auch bleiben - Bath in brilliant Green - A little deeper than you thought | | | | ... until 23 September 2022 | | |  | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |  | | | | Maroon Bells © Arno Rafael Minkkinen | | | | | | Self-Portraits (From Last Three Decades Of Five) | | | | ... until 21 October 2022 | | | The human condition is a dynamic and changing process, marked by circumstances and situations that must be confronted and surmounted. Challenges present themselves in the form of mysteries to resolve, tasks to take on, landmarks to reach. Thus, existence our is defined by evolution - not to be confused with "revolution". It can happen in silence, in the intimate setting of an individual life.
Multiple strategies can help the fluidity of this existential process along. Photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen displays his in an œuvre worth "two hundred seasons" (1).
His photographic work is often described as a staging of the human body in space, or, conversely, landscape vistas harbouring the artist's (or his model's) silhouette to create a dialogue. This questioning happens on several levels and does not exclude the monologue. The juxtaposition of body and landscape is taken to the extreme. The human figure becomes part of the background, almost disappearing within the setting. If the body is the subject, why push it to the limits of its symbolic dissolution? In some photographs, the body clearly stands out from the background, but conjures up something else - it becomes a cloud, or a rock, or a tree trunk...
It abandons its subjective role to take the place of a pictural element and is thus subject to new rules, to visual rather than physical laws.
"Breaking the mould" implies destruction. But this act is not enough. We are only halfway on our quest. The next logical step will be giving shape to something new, fitting neatly into its setting. This is a strategy we find in nature, but also in military thinking. Something between camouflage and mimetics. In nature as in war, it exposes itself less poetically than in the arts. Compelled to "disappear" in order to continue existing and guarantee survival: this is what it means.
The romantic tradition uses this principle in the concept of "Entgrenzung". The individual denies his identity until he stops existing as a human being. The moment doesn't last long, but long enough to overcome the feeling of self and to become something else, to become... part of the landscape? This merging with nature, with the world, elicits a strangely paradoxical effect. It takes us back to what is ready to "break": the individual. It is an overwhelming feeling which forces consciousness past its limits: the actor takes the place of the observer. In this new perspective, ideas take on an objective and free spirit. Thoughts are dissociated from the thinker, suggesting universal openings. Priorities shift, hierarchies are toppled. The images take on a new shape, escaping the obvious and revealing the mystery hidden within: "The secret of the world we are seeking must necessarily be contained in my contact with it. Inasmuch as I live it, I possess the meaning of everything I live." (2)
This step requires courage, for it is the equivalent of a deep dive. The resulting experience and feeling, however, must be unique and marvellously subjective.
(1) Keith F. Davis & Vicki Goldberg: Minkkinen, Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg Berlin, 2019, page 9
(2) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (1964 ; Evanston : Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 32, cited by Keith F. Davis, Ibid., page 34 | | | | | |  | | | | Installation view Arno Rafael Minkkinen © CDI 2021 | | | | | | Arno Rafael Minkkinen (*1945) lives and works in Massachusetts and Finland. Born in Finland, he emigrated to the United States in 1951. He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design in the early 1970s. Today, he is a Professor of Art at UMass Lowell and a Docent at Helsinki's Aalto University. His photographs have been published and exhibited all around the world and major collections such as the MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou and Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography hold his work. Minkkinen is always exploring the relationship between the nude body and the environment. His photographs inhabit the space between self-portraiture and landscape photography.
More information: arnorafaelminkkinen.com | | |
| | | | | | | | | |  | | | | Cheyreen au Pays d'Alice, Marseille, 2020 © Yohanne Lamoulère / Tendance Floue | | | | | | Virage - Manger Tes Yeux, Ici Ment La Ville - Gyptis & Protis | | | ... until 21 October 2022
| | | Every city has its history, its own rhythm and a particular way of life rooted in its evolution. The metropolis of our time is a living organism, both sheltering and devouring the individual. Neighbourhoods are delineated by buildings, turning into microcosms. The houses and blocks are ephemeral, mutating cells. The further they are from the city’s core and the more they lie on the external membrane of the vibrant central substance, or even outside of it, the more their existence is subject to change justified by growth or political ideologies. They are built, only to be destroyed and built up again. One urbanistic vision after another pops up and is shattered, each degrading the setting. The cycle starts anew. The cityscape appears unstable.
Yohanne Lamoulère shows this phenomenon through her photographs. She is interested in the latest trends in urban redevelopment of peripheral neighbourhoods and the consequences for their residents. The concepts for these transformations are often highly controversial, as they have not grown out of the neighbourhood itself, but are imported, imposed, inflicted even. When the public space no longer represents a common area defined within a community, the city turns into deception – "Ici ment la ville"!
How do you exist in a dishonest setting? Is it still liveable, appropriate for human beings, knowing that each of them needs to find their place to avoid getting lost in the anonymous crowd?
Every person must claim their individuality during their life. This quest for identity is assisted by a sense of place, finding one’s roots and identifying with one’s surroundings. This sense of self is an unfinished work, a constant process. A fertile soil is required for its development.
"Breaking the mould. Giving shape."
In her images, Yohanne Lamoulère tells of this individual need: sowing confusion, opposing the lie, disarming predefined norms, swimming against the current. In short: living life to the fullest. | | | | | |  | | | | Exhibition view: Yohanne Lamoulère © CDI 2021 | | | | | | Yohanne Lamoulère (*1980) lives and works in Marseille (France). After growing up on the Comoros Islands, she graduated from the École nationale supérieure de la photographie in Arles in 2004.
She’s a member of the collective Tendance Floue and her themes include the urban periphery and the insularity within its multifaceted aspects. "Faux Bourgs", a compilation of her work on the city of Marseille, was published in 2018. She is also part of the collective Zirlib with the director Mohamed El Khatib. She is currently working on her first film, "L’oeil Noir".
More information: yohannelamoulere.fr | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |  | | | | From the series "As Usual", 2018, Force of Habit © Brooke DiDonato/Agence VU’ | | | | | | As Usual | | | | ... until 14 October 2022 | | | Brooke DiDonato's photographs tell of artistic subversion in a soft, bewitching tone. The photographer shows a seemingly peaceful and idyllic universe, a calming atmosphere dominated by 1950es aesthetics. The viewer can't help being reminded of the American Dream, with the cosy home and well-tended garden reflected in her motifs. The cultural and domesticated landscape is depicted in carefully composed images. The chromatism is pleasing to the eye, the décor enticing, reminiscent of a mail order catalogue, inspiring a feeling of trust and safety. The viewer is left with the feeling that everything is as it should be - "as usual".
But the mind notices a disturbance before the eyes do: each image contains a bizarre element, shows an imbalance, a staging that is slightly off. From this surrealist universe, danger seems inherent in every image. At the same time, it is not devoid of humour. This placid world, where life is measured at a moderate, human scale, is nothing but deception. The photographs quickly unveil a serious, a hidden dimension - or is it very obvious? The lie becomes apparent, resting on the absence of logic in the depicted elements, the meaning of familiar objects twisted, the laws of physics unhinged, habits manipulated, the presence of incomplete or uncanny silhouettes, and ultimately on our unfulfilled expectations.
Brooke DiDonato's images take on a life of their own, outside the norm. They represent a familiar setting and use well-known pictorial codes, but it is just an illusion. The rupture is omnipresent and introduces the paradox. The photographs reveal their true nature in a very direct way: they are only images, illusions, a visual narrative. Imagination can take any shape - even the most familiar. Played to perfection by DiDonato, this game does not pull the work down to the banal. | | | | | |  | | | | Exhibition view: Brooke DiDonato, AS USUAL © CDi 2021 | | | | | | Brooke DiDonato (*1990) lives and works mainly in New York (USA). After studying photojournalism at the University of Kent, she developed her personal work questioning the notion of realism induced by the photographic medium. Showing scenes of everyday life distorted by "visual anomalies" and bathing them in a pastel universe that evokes the American dream of the Fifties, she highlights the evocative power of storytelling through images. She regularly exhibits around the world, in the United States, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
More information: brookedidonato.com / agencevu.com | | |
| | | | | | | | | |  | | | | "Imanaho / You Can Wake Up Now, The Universe Is Over" © Jean-Christian Bourcart | | | | | | Imanaho / You Can Wake Up Now, The Universe Is Over | | | | ... until 24 March 2023 | | | During an "Ayahuasca ceremony" a few years ago, I found myself facing an entity whose appearance was completely unstable; it constantly changed shape, texture, color, from animal, to human, to flora, to abstract with graceful and dizzying fluidity.
What was my surprise when I discovered that artificial intelligence could produce images - interpretive composites generated by algorithms available on the internet - which "resembled" this entity that I had named Imanaho and with whom I had kept a certain bond of familiarity.
What is the link between visions of ancestral shamanic ceremonies in the depth of distant jungles and extrapolations generated by high-performancing machines? The images from cybernetic fusion evoke a delusional world like the natural world of which they seem to be the extension; a heterogeneous, indefinite, fantastic visual jungle as an antidote to any tendency towards normalization, control and regimes of domination. | | | | | |  | | | | Detail, exhibition view Jean-Christian Bourcart, Clervaux, Schlassgaart © CDI 2022 | | | | | | Jean-Christian Bourcart (born 1960) is a French artistic photographer, video and film maker. His work has been shown worldwide and is included in the collection of such prominent institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain in Genève or the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. Nine books about his work have been published. He has been teaching and conducting workshops and masterclasses all along his career. In 2021, all his archives were deposited at the musée Nicephore Niepce in Chalon-sur-Saône in France.
More information: jcbourcart.com/ | | |
| | | | | | | | | |  | | | | Bath in brilliant green © Nina Röder | | | | | | Champagner im Keller - Wenn Du gehen musst willst Du doch auch bleiben - Bath in brilliant Green - A little deeper than you thought | | | | ... until 23 September 2022 | | | Nina Röder’s quest for the essence of what she depicts leads her to scratch at the surface of her subjects. Visually, this is communicated through distortion: veiling, hiding, overlapping or camouflaging the displayed form.
The familiar contours of faces and bodies are variously cracked open and dissolved in order to place them in a new dialogue. The well-known traits of those around her, including her own mother, or her surroundings are expanded and completed. Through rejection of natural perception, the viewer is relearning the act of seeing. We recognize here a variant of the artistic principle of "creation through destruction".
Bodies, immersed in water, only reveal fragments of themselves. Nina Röder covers portraits with delicately crocheted doilies, switching individuality for anonymity in the blink of an eye. Another image shows a face "disfigured" by algae suspended before it. A figure wrapped in fabric is transformed into an abstract sculpture. But Röder deconstructs not only the norms of the form, but also of formality, of conventional expectations. The difference between the object and the subject, between a "thing" and a living organism, seems abolished.
But this artistic act, in all its subversion, is not a brutal gesture. The paradox is shown in all its subtle facets: nonsensical, illogical, askew, risible, ambivalent. The shock preceding the destruction of the form is softened by the humour inherent in the photograph.
Is everything one? – And what is the meaning we can draw from this? | | | | | |  | | | | Exhibition view: Nina Röder, CHAMPAGNER IM KELLER © CDI 2021 | | | | | | Nina Röder (*1983) lives and works in Hamburg and Berlin (Germany). She studied Media Art and Design with a focus on photography at Bauhaus University in Weimar. She has been a Professor of photography at the University of Europe for Applied Sciences Hamburg since 2017. Along with her artistic activities, she holds a Ph.D. in the field of artistic research. Her photographs have been shown at international festivals and exhibitions, such as the GoaPhoto Festival in India, the European Month of Photography in Berlin or the Format Festival in Derby. Her artistic focus lies on exposing hidden and unconscious structures or mechanisms of biographical narratives. In her work, she combines aspects of theatre, stage and performance with photography.
More information: ninaroeder.de | | | | | | unsubscribe here
Newsletter was sent to newsletter@newslettercollector.com
© 29 Aug 2022 photo-index UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
Ziegelstr. 29 . D–10117 Berlin
Editor: Claudia Stein & Michael Steinke
contact@photo-index.art . T +49.30.24 34 27 80 | | |
| |
|
|
