Andreas Baur Books

Paradise handbook reveals a concise insight into the genesis of the film Paradise, which director Sina Ataeian Dena managed to realize in Iran over a period of many years without filming permission and on a very small budget. The resulting footage was eventually brought out of the country and processed and finished in Berlin-Babelsberg. Paradise celebrated its premiere in 2015 in competition at the Locarno Film Festival and was subsequently awarded various prizes. The book reveals a fascinating view of how the film crew dealt creatively with the massive restrictions on filming in Iran. It breaks down, like a manual, the logistical, strategic, and technical efforts underlying the images and scenes that the team applied to circumvent the plethora of restrictions.

»STONED AGIN« »Better than de Kooning«, this title quoted for a group exhibition sounds like a terrible genre joke, because »nobody can paint better than de Kooning«, so it is an ideal title for a group show exhibition. Peter Saul paints during the mid-1970s a series of pictures of women that parodies the »Woman«-pictures (1950–53) of Willem de Kooning. He meticulously imitates the brush strokes and the impasto in a stylistic mix of Pointillism and Graffiti Art, turns up the colour regulator, and allows the abstract-expressionist painting and the women themselves to blend in a »Daliesque« manner, like soft ice cream (see the text »Un Autre Monde« by Marcus Weber and »Ice Creams, Atom Bomb, I-Screens, Data Bomb« by Esther Leslie in this book). In 2008, Saul paints another version of this cartoon-like, neon avatar and calls his painting »Better than de Kooning« …a relief of US reality. Artists: Tim Berresheim, Jana Euler, Maria Lassnig, Lee Lozano, Michel Majerus, Dieter Krieg, Katrin Plavčak, Jon Rafman, Gunter Reski, Peter Saul, Matthias Schaufler, Jim Shaw, Amy Sillman, Sue WilliamsExhibition: Villa Merkel Galerien der Stadt Esslingen: 12/9–15/11/2015

Texte von: Sonia Amelio, Andreas Baur/Konrad Bitterli, Margrit Brehm, Edgar O'Hara, Lori Hersberger, Dietmar Koch, Peter Müller, Markus Raab, Kurt Scheel, Elsa Margarita Schwarz, Wolfgang von der Weppen

Wohl kaum etwas existiert auf der Welt in größerem Überfluss als Fotografien. Sie sind in unserem Alltag omnipräsent. Bisweilen werden sie von (fast) jedem unter uns selbst produziert, etwa als Erinnerungs- oder Urlaubsbilder. Mehr oder weniger bewusst konsumieren wir sie täglich in großer Zahl als Abbildungen zum Beispiel in Zeitschriften oder im Internet. Die an der 6. Internationalen Foto-Triennale Esslingen 2004 teilnehmenden Künstlerinnen und Künstler verbindet, dass sie nicht das Einzelbild in den Vordergrund rücken. Sie interessieren sich alle für Zusammenhänge in Serien, wenn auch unter verschiedenen Aspekten. Vergleichende Untersuchungen von Bildern aus verschiedenen Archiven wie dem eines Bombenentschärfers, des dänischen Militärs oder einer Firma für Einfamilienhausporträts aus dem Flugzeug kommen zum Zuge. Ebenso Bilder, die einem kriminalistischen Interesse folgen oder solche, die kulturelle Randzonen wie das Bikerleben darstellen. Auch – vielleicht heimlich aufgenommene – Fotos aus Privatsphären sind zu sehen neben Ausblicken in weite, schattenlose Landschaften.

Hoël Duret's artistic practice combines fictional stories with real events, forming a visual language based on science fiction, post-apocalyptic cinema, and modernist utopias; the relation­ship between nature and technology is examined against the background of progressive digitalization. The ­installation in the entrance hall of Villa Merkel, for instance, presents a jungle quote embedded in a network of cables. As a result, the proliferating plant-technological organism seems to be engaged in an exchange of information--as though man could not but always control everything, including the growth of plants. Hoël Durets uses an algorithm based on climate data published online to control his artificial ecosystem. This data choreographs in real time the lighting, the vaporization, and the soundtrack of the instal­lation. Scientifically measurable parameters of ­current climate change are thus inscribed into a spatial ensemble oscillat­ing between romanticism and science fiction. This lends the installation a minatory, latently apocalyptic undertone while also reflecting our profound yearning for Arcadia.