Robert Adams
dal 28/6/2005 al 25/9/2005
Segnalato da
28/6/2005
Robert Adams
Haus der Kunst, Munich
Turning Back. Landscapes. The 164 - photograph of this series looks back at the effects of progress. The work is laid out in the fashion of a journey around the American Northwest. This journey begins on the Pacific Coast and follows the expedition intend to explore trade routes in this as a yet uncharted area, taken by Lewis and Clark 200 years ago.
Turning Back. Landscapes
The exhibition Turning Back. Landscapes presents the work of the American artist Robert Adams, born 1937 in New Jersey. For more than four decades Adams has documented nature's transition in the west and northwest of the USA from a natural to a cultural landscape. His extensive series, result in a unique compendium in the world of photography with regard to changes in the contemporary term 'landscape', a "perspective change" with regards to our perception of the landscape and its limited resources.
In the exhibition Turning Back.Landscapes, with over 300 works, the Haus der Kunst presents the most extensive exhibition of Robert Adams in Europe to date. The 164- photograph Turning Back series looks back at the effects of progress. The work is laid out in the fashion of a journey around the American Northwest. This journey begins on the Pacific Coast and follows the expedition intend to explore trade routes in this as a yet uncharted area, taken by Lewis and Clark 200 years ago. Starting from the expedition's natural end, the Pacific, Adams travels over the coastal mountain range into rural Oregon, where the timber industry has irrevocably and deeply damaged 90% of the natural landscape through clearing and reforestation carried out over the last several decades. The series ends 700 kilometers inside the country's interior in a cultural landscape. With this Adams exhibits the potential that lies in an intact landscape that is accessible and gives us the opportunity to regenerate ourselves. Turning Back "is an invitation to share in a kind of pioneering, in a search for a better home. If the journey is hard it is because we must traverse a landscape that we have ransacked. If we find the courage to keep looking it is because we ultimately encounter a mystery that is durable, a glory as serene as the ocean's horizon."(Robert Adams)
In addition to the new series Turning Back the Haus der Kunst presents, in the first room of the exhibition, earlier series of Robert Adams: "The New West" (1974), "Our Lives & Our Children" (1983) such as parts of series "From the Missouri West" (1980), "Listening to the River" (1994) and "West from the Columbia" (1995). The works demonstrate the various approaches of the artist's year-long preoccupation with landscape.
The Book
The book Turning Back is published for the exhibition by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König in collaboration with Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.
Related Programme:
Wednesday, September 14, 8 pm
lecture
"Lazy Clairvoyants and Future Audiences"
Joachim Koester
Artist
Pavillon Denmark, Biennale Venice 2005
Wednesday, September 21, 8 pm
lecture
" Landscapes as Reservates. On the Relation of Contemporary Landscapephotography and -theory"
Dr. Brigitte Franzen
Curator for Contemporary Art at the Westfälischen Landesmuseum, Münster and Co - Curator of "Skulptur Projekte Münster 2007"
Tours free of charge: Thu 8 pm; Sat 15 am
Image: Robert Adams
from "Turning Back", 2004
Silvergelatine Print, © Robert Adams
Haus der Kunst
Prinzregentenstrasse 1 . 80538 München
Opening hours: Mon - Sun 10 am - 8 pm; Thur 10 am - 10 pm