“Was ist dieses kleine bisschen Mehr?”

von Christiane Fricke

Sherrie Levine macht freche Kopien nach Fotografien von August Sander. Die Kölner Galeristen Rafael Jablonka und Priska Pasquer konfrontieren die Werke der beiden Künstler. Was Levine und Sander je Eigenes zu erzählen haben, erschließt sich nur dem aufmerksamen Betrachter.

Köln„Voor beeldende kunst moet je kunnen kijken“. Der Satz ist so einfach und gut, dass man ihn nicht vergisst. Formuliert hat ihn vor rund vier Jahrzehnten der niederländische Künstler Jan Dibbets. Jetzt fällt er einem wieder ein. Anlass sind die auf den ersten Blick frechen Kopien von Fotografien August Sanders durch Sherrie Levine. Die amerikanische Künstlerin, Jahrgang 1947, befasst sich seit mehr als 30 Jahren mit der Aneignung vorbildlicher Werke der Fotokunst; eine Form künstlerischer Auseinandersetzung, die in die Kunstgeschichte als „Appropriation Art“ eingegangen ist.

Sherrie Levine "After August Sander", 2011, courtesy Jablonka Pasquer Projects

Zu besichtigen ist Levines neue Serie bei Jablonka Pasquer Projects in Köln. Die Ausstellung hat das Zeug zum Lehrstück. Denn Rafael Jablonka und Priska Pasquer nutzen darüber hinaus ihre eigenen Galerieräume, um den authentischen Bildern August Sanders (1876-1964) und weiteren Werken Levines zum Auftritt zu verhelfen. So kann der aufmerksame Betrachter vergleichen und im Sinne von Dibbets das „Kijken“ bzw. „Sehen“ lernen.

Angeeignete Bilder

Levines 18-teilige Serie „After August Sander“ hängt bei Jablonka Pasquer Projects; die damit korrespondierende Gruppe von 36 Sander-Fotografien bei Jablonka nebenan. Aus diesem von Sanders Sohn Gunther abgezogenen und zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt von August Sanders Enkelsohn Gerd Sander unter bestimmten formalen und inhaltlichen Kriterien zusammengestellten Konvolut wählte die Künstlerin aus. Zugrunde liegt Sanders unvollendetes, epochemachendes Porträtwerk „Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts“.

Die „Aneignung“ von Sander hat also pikanterweise mehr als nur eine Dimension. Denn Levine benutzt nicht einfach zu Lebzeiten von Sander abgezogene oder zumindest authorisierte „Originale“. Sie stützt sich auf Bilder, die bereits den Status des „Angeeigneten“ besitzen. Gerd Sander, der das Material für diesen Zweck in dieser von ihm so gesehenen Konstellation zur Verfügung stellte, spielt das Spiel also mit. Und damit eröffnet diese Ausstellung auch ein Fenster auf all jene Überlegungen, die um die Authentizität fotografischer Abzüge und um Umgangsweisen mit künstlerischen Nachlässen kreisen.

Daido Moriyama
@ Galerie Priska Pasquer
Vernissage: Friday, September 9, 6pm – 10pm
Exhibition: September 10 – October 29, 2011
Tue – Fri 11am – 6pm, Sat 11am – 4pm

Galerie Priska Pasquer and Jablonka Galerie are delighted to be embarking on a new partnership for the 2011 autumn season. At Lindenstr. 19, Jablonka Pasquer Projects is presenting the exhibition:

Japan 4
Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, Yutaka Takanashi, Shomei Tomatsu

The exhibition centrally features four Japanese photographers whose work has significantly influenced the medium both within Japan and internationally.

Nobuyoshi Araki: Untitled (from “Mythology”), 2001
© Nobuyoshi Araki, courtesy Jablonka Galerie, Cologne

Shomei Tomatsu (*1930) is the most important Japanese photographer of the latter half of the twentieth century. His photography series on the deep-reaching changes that have taken hold in Japanese society since the 1950s and his brilliant and powerful imagery make him the pre-eminent figure in Japanese art. The exhibition features a selection of the artist’s work from his central series, including ‘Bottle Melted and Deformed by Atomic Bomb Heat, Radiation and Fire, Nagasaki’ from the ‘Nagasaki 11:02′ series, as well as his ‘Eros’ work from the ‘OO! Shinjuku’ cover photography on the 1968 generation in Tokyo.

Shomei Tomatsu: Untitled from the series “Eros”, Tokyo, 1969
© Shomei Tomatsu, courtesy Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne

Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama and Yutaka Takanashi are representatives of the ‘Provoke’ generation of artists that forged new frontiers and decisively broadened the scope of photography as a medium.

Yutaka Takanashi (*1935) and Daido Moriyama (*1938), co-founder and member of the ‘Provoke’ group (1968) respectively, radically broke from conventions in photography with their raw expressive style of ‘are, bore, boke’ (rough, blurred and out of focus). Like Shomei Tomatsu, they are driven by the search for identity in contemporary society, a society caught on the cusp between centuries-old traditions and modernity.

Daido Moriyama: Misawa (Stray Dog), 1971
©Daido Moriyama, courtesy Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne

The search for the elemental in society and in individual existence leads Daido Moriyama to the grey fringes of Japanese life – to strip clubs, to the back rooms of cheap Kabuki theatres and to bars catering to American soldiers, but first and foremost to the street and throughout rural Japan.

Yutaka Takanashi’s central theme is also change in Japan. In dark images, he describes a country that in vast areas has become a no man’s land between city and country devoid of any place for human beings except as consumers under the sway of American popular culture.

Yutaka Takanashi: Untiteld (from “Toshi-e” /Towards the City), 1969
©Yutaka Takanashi, courtesy Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne

The revolutionary imagery of the ’Provoke’ group continues to influence street photography in Japan and in the West to this day.

Nobuyoshi Araki (*1940), a contemporary of Takanashi and Moriyama, took a different path in both subject matter and imagery, one founded on an examination of Eros and Thanatos, the taboo depiction of sexuality in the mirror of ephemerality and death. His art flouts both societal and aesthetic rules, showing human sexuality unfiltered. Araki’s pictures range from subtle erotic studies to seemingly pornographic works while renouncing customary evaluations of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ pictures. In his work, he also unites two separate areas, such as personal and commission work, studio shots and street photography, private pictures and public. Nobuyoshi Araki’s work is in many respects marked by a radical transcendence of borders and unbridled excessiveness.

Damian Zimmermann writes about our exhibition “Lieko Shiga – Canary”

Of Swarms of Flies and other Trepidations
- These are strange surreal photographs, which are currently exhibited at Galerie Priska Pasquer. People floating, a  swarm of insects in front of, or a light explosion on their face, or they are reclining on blue tarp under almost menacing cherry trees. The Japanese photographer Lieko Shiga had distributed questionaires to people asking them for the “brightest” or “darkest” places they know. The findings were a mixture of personal reports, local myths, memories, emotions and experiences. They result in fantasic  and almost always irritating-dramatic scenarios, which can cause trepidations to the Western viewer too, while they are beautiful at the same time. [...]

Kölner Stadtanzeiger, June 17, 2011

“One month after the earthquake – five Japanese artists give account”, Le Figaro, April 4, 2011

SHOMEI TOMATSU
PHOTOGRAPHE

Born in 1930, he is known for his series on Nagasaki ten years after the bombing of the city in 1945.

“Civilization went too fast”

“On March 11th, I was in Okinawa, quite far from the north and from the disaster. I watched some of the images of the disaster on TV. I did not want to look at the cascades of images. The reality is far more difficult than the mere visions of these sunken villages. It is impossible to translate such a drama into words. The fact that there are so many victims is in itself a turning point for Japan. Nature’s force, incredible, reminds mankind of the great damage it has inflicted upon it. It is quite different from Hiroshima and Nagasaki: it was a bomb. In Nagasaki, I had seen and followed all these victims (Nagasaki and Scars series). This time, radioactivity spreads in an invisible, unpalpable way, a different kind of menace, less spectacular, slower. It is the defeat of Sciences loosing control, the defeat of the civilization that went too fast, the eye opener of our reliance on nuclear energy. What can we do? It might be wise to consider getting rid of these plants, even if I can offer no other scientific or concrete solution in return.

Nuclear electricity was perceived as a progress for civilization. The problem with scientific discoveries is that they are limitless.”

RINKO KAWAUCHI
PHOTOGRAPHE

Born in 1972, her work was shown at the Fondation Cartier and at ParisPhoto in 2008.

“Like a spiritual test”

“I was in Tokyo on March 11th, at home near Shibuya (the very lively downtown). I was working on the printing of some of my images. I thought: “The Big One is about to happen, finally!”

I knew that Tokyo could experience a major earthquake in the near future. The image that will stick to my mind after the drama is the tsunami sweeping everything away, houses and cars. It was much quieter than I ever imagined it would be. Not being there, I had the reflex to shoot my TV screen as it was showing images of rescue teams spreading water over the nuclear plant, fighting an invisible and unknown enemy. I do not make the connection with WWII, about which I have no family memories. I experienced it as a spiritual test; there are so many metaphors of our time in this drama. I hope that we’ll be able to debate over this and that we’ll overcome it together. Japanese have developed a culture of patience, sacrifice and self-control that we learn from our elders. I did not leave Tokyo. Many advised me to leave the capital to find refuge in the Southwest of the archipelago. My choice was to go on with my daily life, peacefully.”

Download the original article (PDF): Le Figaro, Apres le seisme, cinq artistes japonais, 12.4.2011

AIPAD
March 17-20, 2011
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue, at 67th Street

Art fairs can seem as if they were outside of history, congested labyrinths that confuse time and place. That’s not often the case with the annual Association of International Photography Art Dealers show, where photojournalism is exhibited alongside artier and more experimental work.

This year’s edition is especially, sometimes painfully, current, as many exhibitors have brought work by Japanese artists. In the case of the Cologne gallery Priska Pasquer, plans were already in the works for a booth of pictures by Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, Shomei Tomatsu and others before the earthquake and tsunami hit.

Mr. Tomatsu is well known for his images of post-atomic Hiroshima and Nagasaki; his shiver-inducing 1961 shot of a bottle melted by the blast is here, along with an image of a wristwatch frozen at 11:02, Aug. 9, 1945. Proceeds from the sale of photographs by a younger artist, Lieko Shiga, will be donated to relief efforts in Japan.

….
Full article here

KEN KITANO
Photographs

Galerie Priska Pasquer @Ilan Engel Gallery
77, rue des Archives
75003 Paris

February 9 – March 2, 2011
Tuesday – Saturday
2 pm – 7 pm and by appointment

Priska Pasquer and Ilan Engel are pleased to present the first solo exhibition by Ken Kitano in France. The exhibition features a selection of works from his series ‘Our Face’, ‘One Day’ and ‘Flow and Fusion’.

Ken Kitano, who was born in 1968, has been working on the ‘Our Face’ project since 1999. Beginning in his native Japan, he portrays members of social groups, associations, clubs or professions – for instance lawyers, athletes or ricksha pullers.

A conceptual approach such as this was pioneered by August Sander, whose Weimar typology ‘Face of our Time’ was published back in 1929. Unlike Sander, however, Ken Kitano’s work does not depict individuals belonging to a group, but rather compresses portraits of a group into a single print, in which the portraits (up to several dozen individual shots) are copied upon one another, layer upon layer.

This montage process causes the subjects’ bodies to merge to a ghostly outline, while their faces lose their individuality. The portraits congeal into the final portrait of a group which Kitano terms ‘Our Face’. Furthermore, each ‘group portrait’ allows the artist to convey a unique sense of time and light.

Initially, Kitano concentrated on groups in Japan. Since 2008, he has extended the ‘Our Face’ project to people in Asia. The Ilan Engel Gallery exhibition features portraits from Japan, China, India, Korea, Indonesia and Thailand.

Through Kitano’s special image production technique and the linear positioning of the pictures, he succeeds in levelling out perceived ranks within a group and the hierarchies that hold sway within the individual societies, but also between countries and peoples. In the age of globalisation, Kitano strives to describe the world as an accumulation of localities that are of equal worth, while often differing fundamentally in their mindsets, cultures and customs:

“‘Globalisation’ sounds like a structure where homogeneous people and a single ideology exist centring around one ‘centre’. … There is no such thing as ‘the centre’ in this world. I imagine the world to be composed of many localities. The aim of this project is to help to re-cast the meaning of ‘globalisation’ as the accumulation of individuals and the localities…” (Ken Kitano)

Since 2007 Ken Kitano has been working on two landscape series: “One Day” and “Flow and Fusion”.
In “One Day” Kitano shows landscapes and cityscapes shot over the course of a day from a fixed location. Using a very long exposures the artists says: “I have tried to get as much of “one day” – hopefully twenty-four hours or at least sunrise to sunset”.

While in “One Day” the flow of time becomes visible foremost through the movement of the sun, in “Flow and Fusion” Ken Kitano captures movement of the people. At urban nexus in and around Tokyo he follows the ongoing movement of the masses the rush hour. Using a slow shutter speed, anyone moving dissolves and blurs like water or smoke.

Brief biography
Lives in Tokyo, where he was born in 1968. 1991 Graduated from Nihon University’s College of Industrial Technology. Freelance photographer since 2003. Won the ‘Society of Photography Award’ in 2004 and the ‘Newcomer’s Award’ of the Photographic Society of Japan in 2007.

Exhibitions
2010 “Our Face” Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne (solo)
2010 “Our Face” Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing (solo)
2010 “Flow and Fusion”  UP Field Gallery, Tokyo (solo)
2010 “Our Face & City Flow and Fusion”, Mirai Projects, Stockholm (solo)
2010 “New York Photo Festival”, New York
2009 “BMW Prize Nominee’s Group show / Paris Photo 2009“, Paris
2009 “One Day”, MEM Gallery, Osaka (solo)
2008 “Face”,  Kawasaki City Museum, Kawasaki
2008 “Matrix of Photography 2008. Towards a Game of Photography”, Kawasaki City Museum, Kawasaki
2008 “BMW Prize Nominee’s Group show / Paris Photo 2008″, Paris
2007 “Towards a Game of Photography”, Kawasaki City Museum, Kawasaki
2007 “Thanatos and Eros”, (Emi Anrakuji + Ken Kitano) Epson Imaging Gallery epSITE, Tokyo
2006 “Our Face”, Photo Gallery International, Tokyo (solo)
2006 “Photography Today 3″, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
2000 “Humanscape – Among the People”, Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Kiyosato
1997 “San Marino International Photo Meeting”, San Marino
1996 97 ’98 ’01 ’03 ’04 Young Portfolios, Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Kiyosato
1993 “City Flow and Fusion”, I.C.A.C. Weston Gallery, Tokyo (solo)

Publications
- “Our Face”, Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing 2010
- “Flow and Fusion”, MEM Inc, Osaka 2009
- “Witness #2 Daido Moriyama”, Nazraeli Press, Portland 2007
- “Our Face”, Mado-sha, Tokyo, 2005

August Sander compte parmi les grands photographes du XXe siècle, dont l’influence sur nombre de photographes et artistes contemporains reste aujourd’hui très présente.
« La nature de la photographie dans son ensemble est documentaire » déclarait-il en 1931 au cours d’une de ses conférences radiophoniques. Cette phrase allait rester au cœur de sa conception du travail durant toute sa carrière.
Autour de ces trois thèmes : portraits, paysages et architecture, l’exposition regroupera 120 images dont une partie en tirages d’époque et proposera ainsi au visiteur un panorama représentatif du travail artistique de ce grand photographe. Elle constitue un ensemble exceptionnel que nous sommes heureux de pouvoir présenter pour la première fois au public de la région.

L’exposition a été conçue par Gerd Sander, petit-fils d’August Sander, et organisée en collaboration avec la Galerie Priska Pasquer, à Cologne et le Théâtre de la Photographie et de l’Image Charles Nègre.

Exposition présentée du 29 janvier au 15 mai 2011
THÉÂTRE DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE
ET DE L’IMAGE CHARLES NÈGRE
10h-18h tous les jours sauf lundi et certains jours fériés
27, bd Dubouchage – Nice – entrée libre
04 97 13 42 20
www.tpi-nice.org

Jeunes paysans, Westerwald, 1914 © Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archive, Cologne ; ADAGP, Paris, 2011. Tirage argentique par Gunther Sander. Collection privée

Thomas Linden writes in the Koelnische Rundschau, Dec. 30, 2011:

Hidden Smiles
Sophisticated Portrait Collages at Galerie Priska Pasquer
[....]
The result [of the multi layered portraits] is permeated by a ghostly realism. Usually portraits have – in contrary to all other photographic genres – the characteristic that they meet our gaze. We are being watched, but never with such a hypnotic intensity like in the image of Ken Kitano.
[...]

—-

Damian Zimmerman writes in the Koelner Stadtanzeiger, Jan. 6, 2011:

Average is Beautiful
Galerie Priska Pasquer exhibits Photographs by Ken Kitano
[...]
The black and white portraits by the photographer, born 1968 in Tokyo, are of mystic beauty. They are crystal clear and mysterious, because the viewer can’t trust his eyes. Because his images are not painted – but strictly speaking they are not photographs neither.
[...]
For Ken Kitano it is all about individuality and the  power of group membership alike. Though first of all it is about the authority of the group in contrast to the all engulfing globalization [...]. In a sense Kitano is seeing himself in the tradition of August Sander and his typology of the people of the Weimar Republic [...]. However this is only the theoretical background. Aesthetically his images have a complete different dynamic.
[...]

Kölner Stadtanzeiger, review by Damian Zimmermann:

Menacing Beauty

The Japanese Rinko Kawauchi is the best known women photographer of her country – with her images she has aquired an independent position apart of the major photographers Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki. Since the simultaneously publication of three photobooks in 2001 she is  considers as a star. Among the published books was the legendary book “Utatane” wich means “Nap”: with her wide-awake gift to observe the everyday life and the seemingly dozy eye through the camera she is showing poetic moments inbetween melancholy and death, light and infinity.

At Galerie Priska Pasquer the 38 years old is present her latest works with the title “A Glimmer in Silence”. She remains faithful to her style – unfortunately to her motives as well, which can be found partly one-to-one in “Utatane”: an undfined hole in the ground, and hand gripping at foam, or a tiny frog on a huge heel of a hand. New are her sun images: Her light is refracts in treetrops of a forest, on a rose bloom or in the mirror of a scooter – something beautiful and existential becomes threating, the viewer imagines to go blind, if looking at the image for too long. To this correspondents the a photograph of pork eyes from a butchery. Black and white are intermixed which each other and while produce kitsch with this kind of motives Kawauchi is creating something new.
…
Koelner Stadtanzeiger,  Sept. 9, 2010

—-
Review of “A Glimmer of Silence” on the day of the opening of our show:

WDR3 radio, review by Claudine Engeser (Mp3 file):

Click to listen: Kawauchi review at WRD3 radio, Sept. 3, 2010

—-

The exhibition was also mentioned in the group review of the gallery openings during the DC Cologne Duesseldorf

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), by Magdalena Kröner

Gemeinsame Galerieöffnungen
Wir sind alle Helden, ob in Köln oder in Düsseldorf

6. September 2010 Bereits im Frühjahr kündigte eine Postkarte, die auf der Art Cologne auftauchte, die zweite Ausgabe der „Düsseldorf Cologne Open Galleries” an. Darauf war unbescheiden von „Legendary Contemporary”, also vom Legendären und Zeitgenössischen die Rede. Dazu schillerte golden ein mächtiger Fluss, von dem man nicht wusste, ob es sich um den Rhein oder etwas viel Größeres, wie den Mississippi, handele. Natürlich ist es der Rhein. Und die zweite Ausgabe der gemeinsamen Galerieeröffnungen zeigt sich nun entsprechend selbstbewusst: Die Szene am Rhein ist kein langer ruhiger Fluss; hier bewegt sich was. [...]

Priska Pasquer schließlich zeigt zum zehnjährigen Jubiläum die überstrahlten Alltagsszenen der japanischen Fotografin Rinko Kawauchi, während bei Boisserée zum ersten Mal in der langen Galeriegeschichte mit Blick auf die ja auch noch gleichzeitig stattfindende „20. Fotoszene Köln” ein zeitgenössischer Fotograf präsentiert wird.

[...]

Bis die DC Open Legendenstatus erreichen, wird noch einiges geschehen müssen. Auf jeden Fall aber hat sich ein fester Termin im Herbstkalender etabliert, der vor allem den Zusammenhalt der Galeristen auch über die Stadtgrenzen hinweg stärkt. Ein kraftvoller Auftritt ist auch ein Signal an die Kölner Kulturpolitik, endlich ein besseres Umfeld für die Kunst in der Stadt zu schaffen, die sich trotz Abwanderungstendenzen überaus vital präsentiert.

Franfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sept. 4, 2010

Vernissage
Sunday Oct. 17, 11:30 am

Opening address by Christian Thoener
Introduction by Ferdinand Brueggemann

Exhibition
October 17 – December 19, 2010
Holbeinhaus, Vorderer Lech 20
86150 Augsburg

With works from the series
“Utatane”, 2001
“Aila”, 2004
“the eyes, the ears”,  2005
As slide show: “Cui Cui”, 2005

Supported by Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne