OCEAN – SUMMER EXHIBITION
ZURICH: Until 25 September
JEROEN HOFMAN / AMY FRIEND / MARTIN BOGREN / THIRZA SCHAAP / ALBARRÁN CABRERA / SANDRO DIENER / JEFFREY CONLEY / THOMAS HOEPKER / PAUL CUPIDO / RENATO D’AGOSTIN
Returning after the summer holidays, Bildhalle would like to invite you to a summer apéro at our gallery and give all interested visitors who missed the opening at the beginning of summer the opportunity to enjoy our group exhibition OCEAN. We include works by ten artists who explore the motif of the ocean, each with a different aesthetic approach.
For thousands of years, people of all civilizations have been intrigued by the ocean and have pictured it in a diversity of artistic forms. The ocean is the source of life on earth and symbolic of the unbounded spectrum of animate being. The infinite movement of these masses of water also symbolizes stability. Conversely, the oceans may also stand for formlessness and chaos and, in the interpretation of dreams, for the collective and personal unconscious.
The works of Jeroen Hofman (NL), Amy Friend (CA), Martin Bogren (SE) and Thirza Schaap (NL) are showcased in Switzerland for the first time while the artist duo Albarrán Cabrera (ES) surprise us with a new printing technique of their own invention. Jeffrey Conley (US) and Paul Cupido (NL) enchant us with their pigment prints on Japanese Kozo paper. With Sandro Diener we opened the Swiss gallery eight years ago. The ten artists all take the perspective that we have as human beings and viewers standing on the shore.
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With his own specific method of photography, Jeroen Hofman (*1976) captures the beauty of the Dutch landscape, ranging from the lively city parks in Amsterdam and Rotterdam to the widespread Frisian islands. The artist uses a hydraulic hoist for every shoot, creating a bird’s eye perspective. This technique enables the viewer to discover the various landscapes in their entirety, from the architecture of the parks to the vastness and tranquility of the islands.
Hofman graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 2002 and has worked for a broad variety of magazines and newspapers. In 2012, he published his first book ‘Playground’, a topography of the terrains where special forces practice drills in case of a terrorist attack or other calamities.
For his latest project “Eiland”, Hofman visited the Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea, a unique and dynamic scenery where natural processes proceed largely undisturbed. The islands are a sanctuary, a place where endless thoughts make way for endless horizons.
Amy Friend‘s (*1974, CA) pictures, the ocean is transformed into a memory of times past, brought to life by the artist as delicately scattered, dancing points of light, radiant and motionless at once. To this end, she gives her prints a surprising and particularly weighty materiality: after immersing the prints in seawater, she lays them out to dry for several weeks until the water has completely evaporated, leaving behind a surface covered with crystalline traces of salt.
Thirza Schaap (*1971, NL) reveals the formative power of the ocean. She collects plastic debris that has been shaped and polished by the water and finally washed ashore on the beaches of South Africa. Out of these she makes subtle sculptures, wresting beauty from ugliness in remarkably modern and colourful works. The series of pictures, which she calls Plastic Ocean, is as aesthetic as it is disquieting.
Martin Bogren (1967, SE) draws viewers’ attention to the shoreline life of oceans. His black-and-white photographs show the ocean as a source of energy and life, in documenting the unbridled joy and extreme bodily experience of plunging into the sea. The water is almost physically palpable. For Bogren, called “a master of the everyday sublime” by Sean O’Hagan, photography is a way to understand one’s place in the world. The camera could be key or shield, depending on the mood of the artist. Bogren’s photographs may be described as poetic, cinematic, evocative, romantic or mysterious, yet they also elude any such qualification.
Albarrán Cabrera’s (*1969, ES) virtuoso printing techniques – cyanotypes on aluminium plates and pigments on Japan paper over gold leaf – transport us to places of memory and imagination. Their ocean images feature a compelling combination of sensitivity to their craft and nostalgic aesthetics, contributing substantially to the artist duo’s success as contemporary photographers. The sensuous and poetic presence of their ocean images is indebted to the masterful application of relief, colouring and texture in the printing process.
Jeffrey Conley (*1969, US) is a fine art landscape photographer who specializes in creating traditional black and white prints. His meticulously crafted prints, made utilizing traditional darkroom processes, are made in small limited editions. His work has been widely exhibited and collected by private collectors and museums worldwide. Two monographs of his work, Winter (2011) and Reverence (2018), have been published by Nazraeli Press.
Conley`s photographs strive for a balanced simplicity that evoke his sense of wonder and reverence for the natural world. Scale and palette vary, from small, intimate and subtle, to large, grand and dramatic. In all he seeks to capture a meditative spirit that uniquely defines his approach to photographing the landscape. He strives to create luminous hand-coated platinum & palladium prints that he feels possess a distinctive richness unique to traditional photographic processes.
Thomas Hoepker (*1936, USA/DE) studied art history and archeology, then worked as a photographer for Münchner Illustrierte and Kristall between 1960 and 1963, reporting from all over the world. He joined Stern magazine as a photo-reporter in 1964. Magnum began to distribute Hoepker`s archive photographs in 1964. He worked as cameraman and producer of documentary films for German television in 1972, and from 1974 collaborated with his wife, the journalist Eva Windmoeller, first in East Germany and then in New York, where they moved to work as correspondents for Stern in 1976. From 1978 to 1981 Hoepker was director of photography for the American edition of Geo.
Paul Cupido (*1972, NL) graduated with honors from the Fotoacademie Amsterdam in 2017. He since published a handful of books, including the artist’s publications Searching for Mu (2017) and Continuum (2019) in collaboration with graphic designer Akiko Wakabayashi. Cupido’s work has been exhibited widely internationally, among others at Paris Photo, Unseen, and Nordic Light Festival. In 2017 he won the Hariban Jury Award.
The photographic work of Paul Cupido revolves around the principle of Mu: a philosophical concept that could be translated as ‘does not have’, but is equally open to countless interpretations. Mu can be considered a void, albeit one that holds potential.
