JORN VANHOFEN
2011-09-19Only a few individuals appear in the quiet pictures by photographer Jörn Vanhöfen, or so it seems, at first glance. For behind the aesthetic charm of his visual compositions lies the ambiguity of their aesthetic, as well as the omnipresence of people in the age of globalization.
His landscapes are places man has affected, and then carelessly abandoned, forgotten, but they also depict places of transformation, such as the wildfires in Portugal, droughts, or marble mining in Carrera. With his leftovers, man has created landscapes that ravage, pollute, and supplant: mountains of junk, paper, and old tires; industrial ruins and deserted terrain in mega-metropolises. Vanhöfen creates unique, poetic photographs, which disturb us and question our experience of reality, because they avoid definition. And so his photographs shock us, while confronting “the modern, sentimental feeling about nature,” of which philosopher Georg Lukás has already said that it is “only the projection of experience and the self-made environment is no longer a home for mankind, but a prison.” Nature is no longer comforting, but the “historical, philosophical objectification of the alienation between mankind and his constructs.”
Opposite – Michigan Central # 9865, 2009
Exhibition runs through to October 8th, 2011
Kuckei + Kuckei
Linienstr. 158
D – 10115
Berlin
