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artists & participants
press release
Since „traveling“ became a mass phenomen and even the most remote places are available for everybody the artists elaborate different ankles of approach to this theme.
herman de vries is famous for his „journals“ - collections of all kind of natural materials and artefacts from all over the world. We present his 51 panel piece journal from la palma, 2009.
ROSEMARY LAING, born 1959, Sydney, developes her conceptual series after extensive research trips on sites all over Australia. For her latest series effort & rush, 2015 she went on a touristic tour to Madagascar and Indonisia. Upon closer examination is found that finally only two motives were selected, taken through out the window of a bus in move. Motion blur makes the subject seem almost abstract. In the further digital processing, the images loose their spatial reference and become pure surface. Locomotion is the dominating experience, other aspects of traveling like geographical particularities of places and its people fade away.
Reversal, inversion, rolling and spinning are recurring themes for Laing. They also feature in her most recent works, the series 'effort and rush' (2015), which depict a turbulent, blurry ride through vegetation – shot in Lombok, Bali and Madagascar …
With the advent of digital technology, Laing has observed that there are ‘too many photographs’ out there in the world. Much of modern life is experienced through a filter rather than a direct encounter, and this seems to be the issue that Laing’s latest works address. Rushing through our environment, snapping photos as we go yet never really registering the visual experience, we become trapped as ‘tourists’ at both home and abroad.
Rachel Kent, Rosemary Laing, effort and rush, artasiapacific NOV/DEC 2015, issue 96
BORIS MIKHAILOV (born 1939 UdSSR) lives since 1993 in Berlin and Charkov. Due to his permissive and provocative images he early expierenced massive repression. After his relocation to the West, he realized quickly that even in the Western society the unwritten laws of prevailing aesthetics determine the photographic gaze. But until today his unmeasurable compassion for outsiders and victims of social decay is essential in his work. He enlightens with his camera the darkest areas of moderne societies . His series "From Japan", published by Steidl in 2016, captures images characterizing an aging society.
For SASCHA WEIDNER (born 1976-2015, Berlin) who had been on the road most of his life, travelling was the search for meaning in a romantic sense. However he was aware of the romanticizing gaze and dealt with it in his pictures. Besides from „Hanami“(2014) we choose from his latest series " Traveling through China“(2015). He photographed people at the Tiananmen-Place in Beijing with its giant LCD screens showing geographical highlights from all over China. Passers-by pose in front of the screen to have their souvenir photos or selfies with out ever facing the real.