Louisa Clement and Anna Vogel examine the edges of photography. Their digital and manual interventions (over-painting, collage, scratching) widen the known perception of the photographic image in an experimental and impartial way and exculpate it from the factual. In fact, both artists show in their own way how to separate the photographic connection to time and space, revealing universal and at the same time individual poetic pictorial spaces. Both are students of Prof. Andreas Gursky/Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. It is their first exhibition in Berlin.
Anna Vogel's rather small-sized works show typical landscapes. We see motives being a „good placeholder“ for common and iconic imagery of sea and mountainside, stored in our collective memory. Through manual scratchings, over-painting with airbrush or acrylic, collage and digital manipulation, Vogel destroys the entity of image and carrier. This creates a disruption which emphasizes the texture of the photographic image and alludes to the absence of information or veils it. This imposes question about the mysteria of memory.
Louisa Clement's processed photographs depict still lifes. Her attentively arranged images showing the interiors of trains, passages, corners and carelessly abandoned objects are marked by diffuse surfaces and soft colors. Misty lines and consequent shades of pastel create melancholic, deserted spaces. Her images show unfamiliar but at the same time well-known worlds, which serve as a matrix for associative memorial journeys.
Andreas Gursky became famous with his large and brilliant diasec-photographs. His precision hit the Zeitgeist of the noughties, longing for clear and sleek forms. In contrast, the works of his students Vogel and Clement show a new interest in inwardness and mystery. Gursky's technique of manipulating photography paintinglike is carried on by his students but they create small, diffuse and haptic images in opposition to his large and shiny works. Vogel and Clement manifest new photographic materiality. Maybe they are inspired by the aspiration to create liberalness of thoughts by veiling or extincting photographical facts.
Louisa Clement, *1987 in Bonn, lives and works in Bonn und Düsseldorf. Since 2010 Fine Art studies with Prof. Andreas Gursky, Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. 2007 - 2010 Studies of painting and graphics with Prof. Leni Hoffmann, Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe. 2013 Max-Ernst Grant Brühl. Groupexhibitions (2013): Portrait and a dream, Grafisches Kabinett, Düsseldorf, Piccola Germania, Cinque Garzoni, Venice.
Anna Vogel, *1981 in Herdecke, lives and works in Düsseldorf. Fine Art studies, 2002–2006 with Prof. Thomas Ruff, 2008 – 2010 with Prof. Christopher Williams, 2010 – 2012 with Prof. Andreas Gursky. 2012 Academic and master diploma with Prof. Andreas Gursky. Most promising award for Fine Art by the city of Düsseldorf 2012. Solo-exhibitions (2013): Fensterbilder, KIT im Tunnel, Düsseldorf, Anna Vogel, Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Art Cologne New Positions. Group-exhibitions: State of the Art - New Contemporary Photography, NRW Forum, Düsseldorf (2012).
Monika Pfau, *1981 in Jastrzebie Zdroj/PL, lives and works in Berlin. Art history and cultural studies at Humboldt University Berlin. Master thesis on Andreas Gursky. She works as an independent curator on new forms of photography. Past exhibitions with Heinz Hajek-Halke, Eno Henze and Amir Fattal.
in close cooperation with Monika Pfau Showroom
Monika Pfau
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