Press Release Hendrik Zeitler “Das Unbewusste”
Opening 12 January 2013 kl. 2-6. Exhibition runs until 3 February.
A photo can pay attention to a detail, an event, which we would not have recognized if it hadn’t been photographed. Antonioni’s movie ”Blow-Up” illustrates this phenomena in a brilliant way: a photographer finds traces from a crime first in the darkroom. A woman and a man’s brawl in a park indicate a possible murder.
Hendrik Zeitler’s new exhibition ” Das Unbewusste” (the unconscious) which is shown at Nextart Gallery, highlights photography’s ability to capture events that we probably wouldn’t have seen if it wasn’t for the camera. The exhibition title refers to the concept “The Optical Unconscious” which was coined by Walter Benjamin in the essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. Benjamin aims in this case on the camera’s clarifying capacity: that it can discover things we otherwise would have missed.
” Das Unbewusste” presents two series. ”Strobe” revolves around random mistakes in the photo production, such as a rain drop or an umbrella tip that has been caught in a close up. The chilly white flash runs through all the images and the photographs adopt an almost abstract character. The pictures otherworldly excitement clashes against the family-based motives. The artist is portrayed with his loved ones, out in the nature, on trips or around the home, like a part of a family album. However, the direct presence which photos of this kind usually provide is absent. Instead, we are reminded of the temporal space that exists between the portrayed and us, a frozen and remote moment.
In the ”Camera Obscura”-series, Zeitler has remade whole rooms into pinhole cameras and allows the exposure time to delay, sometimes up to a week. This method reveals images that we wouldn’t have seen with our own bare eyes, and they form coexisting patchworks of environments, colors and cormorants. Most of the photographs are taken in Zeitler’s family apartment in Hammarkullen, a residential area characterized by much greenery. The lush vegetation spreads into Hendrik’s apartment, a kaleidoscopic result of the pinhole camera.
The camera’s mechanical limitations and possibilities work like a connective link between the “Strobe” – and the “Camera Obscura”-series. On the other hand, the photographs evoke existential thoughts that seem far away from those technical perplexities. They make us think of time, space and life.
Hendrik Zeitler (born 1975) received his Master-degree at the School of Photography in Gothenburg 2003. Zeitler has also studied Gender Studies at Gothenburg University and Art and Architecture at Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm. His art has been exhibited in both separate – and group exhibitions as Art museum at Abecita Corsettfabrik, Borås and Gothenburg’s fourth International Biennial for Contemporary Art. His book “A Place of One’s Own”, which can be purchased in Nextart’s Bookshop, was nominated for the Swedish Photo Book price in 2011.
For more information and press images please contact Sara Arvidsson +4670-940 81 18 or sara@nextart.se
Loves rum, Hammarkullen, 2012, analog färgkopia från 4×5″-negativ, ramad.