Fotomuseum Winterthur : Research and Invention

The Winterthur Photo Museum by Zurich, presents Research and Invention - Investigations with Images in Contemporary Photography, an exhibition from 02.06. - 19.08.2007. The most differing photo artists were combined by curator Thomas Seelig.

Throughout its history, photography has always evidenced points of contact with other disciplines, from science to popular culture. Increasingly, in recent years, artists and photographers have been exploring this wide field of ideas for their photographic practice and examining their surroundings and the world with an analytical approach verging on the scientific.

Perhaps the best known example of this from an earlier era is Karl Blossfeldt's portfolio of *Art Forms in Nature*, first published around 1930. Originally intended as a photographic teaching aid for students of botanical anatomy, the series is distinguished by its aesthetic and formal rigour. On the track of a scientific approach, the search for a theme, the pursuit of a trail, the exploration and discovery of form, but liberated from the gesture of objectivity, artists today are approaching these visual and research areas, sometimes with great earnest, sometimes with humour and irony, and often with the aim of questioning the criteria of the search for truth and social models.

French artist Pierre Bismuth (*1963, France) uses a clever blend of dadaist tradition and witty conceptual art to explore established notions of visual reproduction. With an apparent levity that belies the magnitude of the gesture, he undermines the significance and aura of the work of art, while at the same time reclaiming it for himself. In his "Origami Unfolded" series, a reproduction of a work of art, folded into an origami figure, takes on a new status as (applied) art. These new hybrid works are an ingenious cross between reproduction and appropriation. We have attached two of his pieces.

In faraway Iceland, Kristleifur Björnsson (*1973, Iceland) has developed a singular approach to widely available visual worlds. He downloads images of Hollywood starlets from the web onto his hard disk and then appropriates them. In a lengthy process of selection, Björnsson develops a kind of Platonic relationship to the images of actresses, which he exhibits in larger-than-life format. The fine line between the publicly presented ideal and the emotions that develop in response to it casts up questions about the extent to which the flood of internet images creates entirely new realities.

Danish artist Joachim Koester (*1962, Denmark) seeks out places that have a story - places with a certain art historical, sociological or historical importance. In 2005, for his "Morning of the Magicians", Koester traveled to Cefalu, Sicily, in search of the villa used by English occultist and hedonist Aleister Crowley and his followers in the 1920s. Having eventually located the ruins of the building, Koester discovered, under many coats of paint, some explicitly sexual and drug-fuelled frescos from Crowley's day. We have attached a photograph from this piece of work.

For those of you that may not find the time to visit the exhibition in the Fotomuseum, we strongly recommend the accompanying publication from the Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess publishing house: Forschen und Erfinden - Die Recherche mit Bildern in der zeitgenössischen Fotografie / Research and Invention - Investigations with Images in Contemporary Photography. Ed. Thomas Seelig,Format 20,3 x 28,1 cm, approx. 82 colour and 90 b/w-illustrations.

FOTOMUSEUM WINTERTHUR
2 June - 19 August 2007
Grüzenstrasse 44+45 , CH-8400 Winterthur (Zurich)