Torsten Warmuth
dal 5/11/2007 al 17/1/2008
Segnalato da
Anna Augstein Fine Arts Berlin
5/11/2007
Torsten Warmuth
Anna Augstein Fine Arts Berlin, Berlin
It's a Man's World. The artist sets out in search of the unmistakable face of the world's metropolises. Previously, this was in Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Paris or New York, and now in Africa's biggest city: Cairo. It is urban life beyond the tourist destinations that shapes the face of a city.
It's a Man's World
Torsten Warmuth sets out in search of the unmistakable face of the world's
metropolises. Previously, this was in Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Paris or New York, and
now in Africa's biggest city: Cairo. It is urban life beyond the tourist
destinations that shapes the face of a city. In Cairo, a metropolis of twenty
million, Torsten Warmuth found this in the bazaars of Khan-el-Khalilil, the
traffic-filled street of Talaat Harb in the traditional commercial and banking
district, and in the cavas (coffee houses) on Midan Sayeda-Aisha, not far from the
"city of the dead", Imam Al-Shafi'i. Torsten Warmuth employs a large-format camera
to visually isolate fractions of a second.
With rigorous precision, the artist
exercises, seeks and composes - like an alchemist - light and shade; in "It's a
Man's World", he stalls the movement of passers-by as they push "Against the Flow"
in the same way as he halts the busy taxi drivers from downtown Cairo. The very
things that these strangers keep from us are disclosed in the intentional blurring;
their destinations, their secrets, their breath. Torsten Warmuth exposes them and
makes them accessible to us, but still maintains a distance. We long for their
facial contours, but the photographer denies them to us consistently. He dismisses
us with magic - there is no pointing finger, nothing didactic. An exposure time that
persists into the unrecognisable means that the pictorial subject - almost always
the human figure in his work - remains little more than imagined, glimpsed, sensed.
Perhaps his refusal to provide clarity reminds us that we only see in others what we
understand; what we want, what we believe we can see, or what we can tolerate.
Everything is in a state of uninterrupted motion around us - and our longing for
quiet goes unsatisfied. Inevitably, the viewer recognises himself in these beings as
they cautiously feel their way through the world. Every single one of us is one of
these flitting figures. No-one will ever hold onto us - any more than we can grasp
the young boy pushing his cart through the hurly-burly of Cairo. Adept as he may be
at finding his way through life, he remains vulnerable and no-one can pin him down.
By means of his slow-motion photography, Torsten Warmuth pinpoints our futile desire
to cling to things.
Image: Old Cairo, 2007, Gelatin Silver Print, toned
Opening: Tuesday, 6th November 2007 6-9 pm
Anna Augstein Fine Arts Berlin
Fasanenstr. 69, Berlin
Tues-Fri 12 midday - 7 pm . Sat 11 am - 4 pm
free admission