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20/10/2006

Balthasar Burkhard

Fabian & Claude Walter Galerie, Zurich

From 21 October to 22 December 2006, the Fabian & Claude Walter Galerie, Zurich, is holding a solo exhibition of Swiss photographer Balthasar Burkhard (b. 1944, Berne). In addition to photographs from the "Cities" (1999) and "Deserts" (2000) series, works from the series entitled "Bamboo" and "Falcon" from the early 1990s are shown in the exhibition.

Balthasar Burkhard’s now legendary city photographs were first shown in 1999 at both the 48th Venice Biennale and the Fabian & Claude Walter Galerie in Basle. The curator of the Biennale exhibition was Harald Szeemann, with whom Burkhard had been linked by professional collaboration and close personal friendship since the 1960s. When Szeemann was the director of the Kunsthalle Bern from 1961 to 1969, Burkhard assisted him as a photographer in producing advertisements and catalogues and in documenting exhibitions. From 1969 to 1970, Burkhard collaborated with Markus Raetz. Together they devised a series of photocanvases, which established Burkhard’s reputation as a pioneer of monumental black-and-white photography. In 1970, the works were shown for the first time in a museum exhibition, the "Visualisierte Denkprozesse" show at the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne, curated by Jean Christophe Amman.

In 1977, Burkhard presented his work at a solo exhibition for the first time at the Zolla Liebermann Gallery in Chicago, where he worked as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois from 1976 to 1978. After his return to Switzerland, this was followed by his first solo exhibitions in museums, at the Centre d'Art Contemporain in Geneva (1980) and the Kunsthalle Basel (1983). There Burkhard sensationally showed two female nudes, each extending over more than 13 metres. Not only human bodies, but also plants were a recurring theme in Burkhard’s work in the ’80s. When he was teaching at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Nimes between 1990 and 1992, the artist discovered a man-made bamboo grove in Anduze, which inspired him to take the photographs shown at the Fabian & Claude Walter Galerie. In the ’90s a series of animal photographs followed; in these the motif of the falcon’s wing, a subject with a nuanced structure virtually predestined for black-and-white photography, held an ongoing fascination for Burkhard.

A few years later, Burkhard took the photographs of cities and deserts presented in this exhibition. They show the opposites of nature and civilisation in their most extreme polarity: the wide landscape of dunes, softly formed by the forces of nature, and the man-made urban landscape divided into small plots. In black-and-white technique and by means of aerial perspective, pictures of exceptional clarity and distance are produced, their forms taking on abstract characteristics. Burkhard is not concerned in his work with making a portrait of a particular town or a specific place, but with the natural or civilizatory phenomenon in itself. In the process, he approaches his subject without judging, without political or philosophical implications, with an open, yet matter-of-fact gaze.

For decades, Burkhard’s photographs have exerted an extraordinary fascination over those viewing them. This is based on the one hand on the classical beauty of the pictures and their technical perfection, and on the other on a certain feeling of being overwhelmed which the person viewing the works experiences. The large-format pictures, especially the shots of the desert, provide viewers with few aids to orientation, nothing to catch the eye that could serve as an introduction or finale to the viewing of the photograph. The eye roams around and is overwhelmed by the monumentality of both the picture itself and the subject it portrays. This makes us shudder with a mixture of admiration and awe which distinguishes Balthasar Burkhard as a photographer of the sublime.

Photographs from other photographic series and graphic works by the artist can be seen at the Fabian & Claude Walter Galerie on request. We are available to provide further information at any time, and would also be happy to send you illustrations of Balthasar Burkhard’s work.

Fabian & Claude Walter Galerie
Limmatstrasse 270, CH-8005 Zurich
Opening hours:
Tuesday - Friday: 12-18, New: Saturday: 11-14 and by appointment

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