calendario eventi  :: 

X

13/9/2007

Peter Granser

Kaune, Sudendorf Gallery, Koln

Signs I

You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.
David Crockett, politician (1786-1836)

The arrow provides orientation, unmistakably pointing toward the right: it is displayed on a billboard in the midst of steppe-like scenery, with large lettering announcing 'Signs.' This is a picture within a picture, rife with symbolic content, for Peter Granser has chosen to give this title to his latest series of photographs, taken in 2006/07 in Texas. In the course of an extended photographic tour of the US state, Granser attempted to find reference values that could be captured in images capable of laying bare the current state of the American soul.

On the heels of 'Sun City' and 'Coney Island,' the photographer's third series, 'Signs', draws a telling picture of life today in the USA. Granser traveled over 19,000 kilometers through the cliché-ridden, myth-laden "republic" of Texas in the US south, through a state that is twice the size of Germany and which has always been written off as eccentric, reactionary and excessive. Today, however, Texas has become the heartland of a fundamentalist, conservative ethos that is paradigmatically embodied by the perpetuation of the death sentence and the politics of the Bush administration.

Job well done
With keen and objective precision, Peter Granser focuses in his color photographs on the plethora of relics and signs that proliferate across the landscape and provide us with insights into the strange and contradictory state of contemporary US identity. In a conference room at the Fort Hood military base, the US Army's biggest boot camp back in the days of the Cold War, two clocks indicate the time in the USA and in Iraq. The whiteboard beneath them is empty, except for a doodle of a little girl in the corner, smiling. Plastic cups pressed into the holes of a fence in front of supply containers spell out a welcome home for soldiers returning from Iraq. JOB WELL DONE is the message, in the colors of the American flag. A flag also adorns the legendary NASA moon rocket Saturn V in Houston, but it is covered by a clear plastic tarp. Oil derricks, traditional symbol of the wealth of the Texan oil magnates, survive in Midland only as silhouettes lined up on a mural decorating the side of a high rise. A mass religious event in America's biggest megachurch, composed by Granser in the form of a monumental triptych, is staged as a faceless place where the human individual no longer has any value. Salvation takes precedence.

Emptiness and stagnation dominate the atmosphere in this photo series resonant with skepticism, which in its formal qualities and motifs deliberately makes reference to the work of various American documentary photographers (Walker Evans, William Eggleston, Henry Wessel). 'Signs' adds a new chapter to this legacy, depicting present-day Texas as an intellectually ossified realm where rigorous puritanical devoutness mixes with capitalist and patriotic interests to create a menacing brew.

Opening 14 september 2007, 7pm

Kaune, Sudendorf Gallery for Contemporary Photography
Albertusstr. 26, Koln Germany
Admission free

stampa

permanent link