Martin Zellerfoff
Archiv
23 Nov 2019 - 24 Jan 2020
MARTIN ZELLERFOFF
Archiv
23 November 2019 - 24 January 2020
Storage, depot, archive, museum – places where memories are deposited traditionally have long since become not just metaphors but concrete forms of contemporary art. Martin Zellerhoff’s 63-part series Archiv deals with the depiction of a collection of this kind, created as work material and a private memory aid of an art historian. Zellerhoff photographed the transparent plastic slide cassettes on a light table on which slides and negatives were viewed and sorted with a magnifying glass in the age of analogue photography. The slightly desolate state of the compilation seems to confirm those pictorial theories that had predicted the demise of this medium.
Zellerhoff, whose practice has long been concerned with conventions of image production and presentation, reflects in Archiv on the parallel process of the disappearance of motif and medium from the dual viewpoint of the man behind the camera and the picture editor of his own exhibition. In the totality of the presentation of the series in the exhibition space and it’s re-presentation in the catalogue, his own photos are clearly only one part of the personal work. Basically he presents alien combinations of images and imposes his personal hyperimage on them. It can not be clearer: here the medium is the message. A medium that works strictly referentially. Such art feeds on the conviction that history and conventions of photography, indeed the apparatus itself, have enough to tell the viewer. Therefore, Zellerhoff’s pictures may often look simple – almost ‚inartistic‘ – but eventually they are full of information, hints and suggestions.
A catalogue (German/English) will be published for the exhibition.
Archiv
23 November 2019 - 24 January 2020
Storage, depot, archive, museum – places where memories are deposited traditionally have long since become not just metaphors but concrete forms of contemporary art. Martin Zellerhoff’s 63-part series Archiv deals with the depiction of a collection of this kind, created as work material and a private memory aid of an art historian. Zellerhoff photographed the transparent plastic slide cassettes on a light table on which slides and negatives were viewed and sorted with a magnifying glass in the age of analogue photography. The slightly desolate state of the compilation seems to confirm those pictorial theories that had predicted the demise of this medium.
Zellerhoff, whose practice has long been concerned with conventions of image production and presentation, reflects in Archiv on the parallel process of the disappearance of motif and medium from the dual viewpoint of the man behind the camera and the picture editor of his own exhibition. In the totality of the presentation of the series in the exhibition space and it’s re-presentation in the catalogue, his own photos are clearly only one part of the personal work. Basically he presents alien combinations of images and imposes his personal hyperimage on them. It can not be clearer: here the medium is the message. A medium that works strictly referentially. Such art feeds on the conviction that history and conventions of photography, indeed the apparatus itself, have enough to tell the viewer. Therefore, Zellerhoff’s pictures may often look simple – almost ‚inartistic‘ – but eventually they are full of information, hints and suggestions.
A catalogue (German/English) will be published for the exhibition.