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  SONJA BRAAS I CONTREBANDEAugust 27 – October 2, 2009PRESS RELEASE / PRESSMITTEILUNG PRESS RELEASE Sonja Braas The Best of Stash – g27 Opening: 27 August, 5.00 - 8.00pm In their first exhibition at Zurich's g27, staged in collaboration with the galleries Christian Roellin (painting, Klaus Merkel) and Peter Tellini (design, Jean Prouvé), Fabian & Claude Walter Galerie are presenting photographs by the New York-based German artist Sonja Braas (*1968 Siegen). For this occasion the most important photographs have been assembled from the work cycles "Forces" and the recent "The Quiet of Dissolution". As in her former workgroups "you are here" and "Forces", the human perception of nature forms the subject matter of Braas's newest series "The Quiet of Dissolution". The works shown at Fabian & Claude Walter Galerie display nature in its most extreme forms: as a wild storm, a stultifying freak wave or as an apocalyptic oil spill. The photographs confront the viewer with natural phenomena which, by their destructive force, pose a threat to humans and their environment. In "The Quiet of Dissolution" both human perception of natural disasters and the emotional distance to the incident play a decisive role. For the victims they are traumatising experiences. The Tsunami catastrophe of 2004, with its direct and repeated presence in the media and the internationality of its victims, resulted in a global reaction of shock and an immediate decline in tourism. At the same time, the genre of disaster movies, ever since its zenith in the 70s, enjoys lasting popularity. The experience of natural disasters as mere fiction, the artificially created thrill, that has nothing in common with real danger, can be perceived as pleasantly entertaining. When contemplating the photographs shown at Fabian & Claude Walter Galerie, the viewer cannot immediately distinguish between nearness and distance, reality and fiction. As their motifs conjure up visions of real natural disasters, the photographs affect the viewer directly, arousing strong emotions. Contrary to TV images, which can be located clearly in time and place and thus allow a certain dissociation, Braas's photographs, taken in extreme close-up, provide no information regarding the nature of their origin. Yet, it is exactly this absence of anything anecdotal that perplexes: the aesthetics of these images with their painterly quality appear almost too perfect. As soon as the purely associative, emotional reaction of the viewer is followed by an analytic, rational perception, the suspicion arises that these images could have been generated digitally. In reality, the photographs were taken by analogue technique without any digital manipulation. The objects photographed, however, were completely fictive: large-sized, artificial models, meticulously arranged by the artist in her studio. By photographing these models, the artist created images of nature which, with the concurrence of associative references to reality and their fictive settings, attain a powerful and irritating appearance. In her photographic series "Forces", Sonja Braas shows the force of nature - wild, untamed and untouched by civilisation. Towering thunderclouds, mountain ranges reaching high into the sky, eternal snowfields: the camera finds itself amidst these overwhelming scenarios, apparently detached from the photographer's hand, in absolute negation of human presence. It is as if these monumental photographs seek to correspond to a Romantic concept of nature. When looking at them we certainly sense something of the sublime quality the Romantics considered nature to possess. And yet again, the artist deceives the viewer, pushing that Romantic view of nature to an absurd conclusion. While approximately half the photographs were taken outdoors, the others show landscapes that were meticulously arranged and then photographed in the studio. The traditional understanding of photography as a documentary medium that represents reality versus the concept of a staged, manipulated art developed in the age of digital photography both find their expression in "Forces", while the contrasts between those two poles are simultaneously diminished. The manipulated photographs unmask the images of intact nature as a deception. At the same time, it becomes clear that every so-called documentary photograph - and ultimately every image that human beings have of nature - is manipulated in the sense that it is founded on personal assumptions and expectations. The Romantic vision of a primaeval nature untouched by human civilisation is shown to be utopian. Please do not hesitate to contact us for further information about the work of Sonja Braas. Images can be supplied on request. Works by Sonja Braas in the following exhibitions: Kunstmuseum Bonn,
FERNE NÄHE, >NATUR< IN DER KUNST DER GEGENWART (Group Show)
, Haugar Art Museum, Tonsberg (NO),
“AntArctica” (Group Show) 12
September – 8 November 2009 KUNSTWERK, Deutsche Gegenwartskunst aus der Sammlung Alison & Peter W. Klein, Eberdingen-Nussdorf (DE), Strozzina ccc, centro di cultura contemporanea a Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, (I) |