Gerrit Engel
New York - Berlin
29 Jul - 01 Nov 2009
© Gerrit Engel
2006, Foster and Partners, 959 Eighth Avenue, at 57th Street
New York - Berlin. Photographs.
2006, Foster and Partners, 959 Eighth Avenue, at 57th Street
New York - Berlin. Photographs.
Berlin - shaped by the political upheavals of the 20th century like no other city - and Manhattan, New York, the epitome of the big city, metropolis of the Modern Age. In the photographs of Gerrit Engel these two cliché-laden cities are to be seen in a new, completely unfamiliar light. He focuses on the buildings like a scientist researching exotic beings. Fascinated, yet at the same time with the distance of a scientist. With »vasculum-like dispassion«, but not without affection.
Gerrit Engels photographs are portrait studies of houses, each with their own face, that join forces to create a portrait of the entire city - history of the city based on images of its striking, more or less attractive buildings, both large and small, spectacular or merely picturesque.
For the exhibition of the Neue Sammlung, which is the photographer's first major museum exhibition since the presentation in Nuremberg, Gerrit Engel has selected works from both of the series and chosen an installation highlighting inner relationships of architectural history and style rather than the chronological arrangement.
Gerrit Engels photographs are portrait studies of houses, each with their own face, that join forces to create a portrait of the entire city - history of the city based on images of its striking, more or less attractive buildings, both large and small, spectacular or merely picturesque.
For the exhibition of the Neue Sammlung, which is the photographer's first major museum exhibition since the presentation in Nuremberg, Gerrit Engel has selected works from both of the series and chosen an installation highlighting inner relationships of architectural history and style rather than the chronological arrangement.