Juergen Teller. Zittern auf dem Sofa

Juergen Teller. Zittern auf dem Sofa
08.06.2018 - 19.08.2018

In June 2018 Russia will host the FIFA World Cup, which will span eleven cities. Garage will mark this important footballing occasion with a new exhibition developed specially by photographer Juergen Teller, who is a keen football fan.

Arguably one of the most original voices in his field, Teller has been published in magazines such as Arena Homme+, POP Magazine, Vogue, Purple, i-D, Die Zeit, and W Magazine, and has created campaigns for Céline, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Adidas, and Vivienne Westwood. Teller’s work has been exhibited in major shows internationally and is featured in numerous collections around the world. He has published forty-five books and exhibition catalogues and currently holds a Professorship of Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg.

The core of the exhibition is a video broadcast of every German game played and watched by the artist. Depending on the success or failure of the German team, the result will be either happy or sad. The show will also feature famous footballers past and present. Interspersed within the football context will be works shot all over the world that make up Teller’s universe and present thinking: they are unrelated to football, but related to nature, animals, humans, and the world.

Teller’s style is hard to pinpoint. In almost every series he defies commonly accepted ideals of beauty. At the same time, his works are humorous and often personal, featuring his family and his surroundings. The exhibition at Garage will include a multitude of old and new photographs, presenting a grand narrative that brings together football, personal history, fandom, and other themes that are important either in the context of this summer’s events or the artist’s own life. Visitors will be introduced to Teller’s signature perspective of the engaging observer, portraying a variety of sitters and subjects, as well as exposing himself to the lens.

At the center of the exhibition is the famous and provocative—in terms of both form and content—shot of a naked Teller with a beer bottle and a football standing on his father’s grave. Family trauma is intertwined with football: Teller’s strict and headstrong father did not think much of the game. The exhibition will feature parts of the series Siegerflieger (2014), named after the German national football team’s airplane. In Siegerflieger, Teller follows the team’s 2014 World Cup successes on TV with his friends and family and captures the euphoria of celebrating their victory in the 2014 World Cup among a crowd of fans in Berlin. An earlier series, Naked on the Soccer Field (2002), conveys the sense of disappointment after Germany’s loss to Brazil in the final of the 2002 World Cup.

The exhibition is organized by Kate Fowle, Garage Chief Curator, with Valentin Diaconov, Garage Curator and Andrey Misiano, Garage Research Curator.

Juergen Teller (b. 1964, Erlangen, Germany) studied at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie in Munich, before moving to London in 1986. Considered one of the most important photographers of his generation, Teller has successfully navigated both the art world and commercial photography since beginning his career in the late 1980s, blurring the boundaries between his commissioned and personal work in his numerous publications and exhibitions. In 2003, Teller was awarded the Citibank Prize for Photography, and, in 2007 was asked to represent the Ukraine as one of five artists in the 52nd Venice Biennale. He has published forty-one artist’s books and exhibited internationally, including solo shows at the Photographer’s Gallery, London (1998), Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2004), Foundation Cartier, Paris (2006), Daelim Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul (2011), the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2013), Deste Foundation, Athens (2014), Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (2015), Phillips, London (2015), Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (2016), Blum & Poe Gallery, Tokyo (2017) and Kunstpalais, Erlangen (2017). He currently holds a Professorship of Photography at the Akademie der Bildende Künste Nürnberg.