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3/11/2006

Roger Ballen

Galerie Nicola von Senger, Zurich

Shadow Chamber

Galerie Nicola von Senger is pleased to present Roger Ballen’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland. The artist has won numerous awards, including the prize for “Best Photographic Book of the Year" at the PhotoEspana festival in Madrid in 2001 and was named “Photographer of the Year" at the inaugural Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles in France in 2002. A traveling exhibition comprising many images from the series Shadow Chamber and Outland was shown at Frans Hals Museum, Bibliothe'que Nationale Paris, Fotomuseum Antwerpen and will be shown at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg in 2007.

For 30 years, the New York born artist has been living and working in Johannesburg, South Africa, where prospecting for mineral deposits as a mining entrepreneur brought him to remote areas of the country. His photographs documenting these rural regions from the early 1980s until 1994 were powerful social statements and resulted in the publication of two collections of photographs: Dorps: Small Towns of South Africa (1986) and Platteland: Images from Rural South Africa (1994).

Departing from a purely documentary approach, Ballen came closer to his subjects in the late nineties and found a unique photographic style that incorporates collaborative elements and a psychologically dense mise-en- scene. The exhibition at Galerie Nicola von Senger contains a selection of photographs from the series that defined (Outland, 2001) and refined (Shadow Chamber, 2005) this style. His photographs are striking, ambiguous images of people, animals and objects posed in mysterious, cell-like rooms that occupy the grey area between fact and fiction, blurring the boundaries between documentary photography and art forms such as painting, theatre and sculpture.

The results are completely abstract and not defined by the origins or specific location of the characters he photographs. Ballen focuses on the interactions between the people, animals and objects that inhabit mysterious rooms - the shadow chamber. The rooms are unsettling and strange: their walls are covered with scribbled drawings, stains and dangling wires, the floors are strewn with bizarre props and artefacts. Dogs, rabbits and kittens wander into the frame or are stuffed into unlikely containers. Figures hide away in boxes, crouch behind overstuffed sofas and squat with their shirts pulled over their heads. The humans and animals in Ballen’s photographs appear isolated, estranged and lost, yet strangely empowered at the same time. The resulting images are surreal and intriguing, powerful and disturbing psychological studies.

Roger Ballen, 1950 New York City, lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa

Opening: 04 November 2006 6-9pm

Galerie Nicola von Senger AG
Bleicherweg 45 - Zurich
Opening hours:Tue - Fri 9.30am - 6pm / Sat 12 - 4pm

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