Thomas Wrede
dal 7/5/2009 al 19/6/2009
Segnalato da
7/5/2009
Thomas Wrede
Galerie f 5,6, Munich
Real Landscapes. In the series "Strange Paradise" the artist proves his mastery of subtle, visual image-puzzles, piecing together reality and design. The wondrous, reflective arrangement of landscape fragments into more-than-real model sceneries contrasts with coastal landscapes that appear to be lost in reverie. Miniature, romantic worlds of images appear simultaneously foreign and familiar.
Thomas Wrede newest series: strange paradise
… In “Strange Paradise” Thomas Wrede once more proves his mastery of subtle, visual image-puzzles, piecing together reality and design. The wondrous, reflective arrangement of landscape fragments into more-than-real model sceneries contrasts with coastal landscapes that appear to be lost in reverie. Miniature, romantic worlds of images appear simultaneously foreign and familiar. The lack of size references creates, without any digital manipulation, optical deceptions that leave one's perception swimming… rolling…wandering.
Like an impostor's fairy tale, the compositions portray scenes of vastness, tranquility, yearning, but also fear and the prospect of peril. Wrede reveals the artificial instant of photography as a consequence of the artificiality of its staging. In the tense field between the basic documentary function of the medium and its artistic fragility, Thomas Wrede succeeds in making convincing visual statements concerning questions of imagery and image. In the end, the image itself serves as aesthetically perfect evidence for its own conclusive reality…
(preface by Rainer Danne, in: strange paradise)
In his earlier work the German artist Thomas Wrede ( b 1963) confronts the viewer with different and at the same time familiar „landscapes“. Working in different series his “Domestic Landscapes“ are a collection of images of photographic wallpaper in different German domestic households, representing a kind of collective “ideal dream memory“ - the perfect mountain landscape, exotic beaches, Manhattan etc. Wrede’s series “Magic Worlds”, for which he won many different awards (e.g. DG Bank Award 1997) deals with photographing empty German Fun Fairs and Parks. In “Picture Worlds“ Wrede photographed New York, where Billboards and Commercials, wallpaper the city anew. In “Small Worlds“, Wrede used a large format camera, working with different Focal points to create images that look like miniature models of trucks, ships, tanks and fake landscapes.
Wrede’s work deal with the many different layers of perception and different sociological associations, with the image within the image, or with supposed reality in relation to created artificiality. Wrede asks questions about landscape and its imagery, often where painting is the beginning trajectory. Images like Mozart and Drinking Man in front of Autumn Landscape or Mountain Landscape in Mirror are almost peculiar landscapes where the interior of the home and its wallpaper come together as a very different landscape, with very different meanings. Reality and artificiality, humour and sobriety, knowledge and presentiment and individual lives, are complexly woven structures in one image.
In his series of Fun fairs and parks devoid of humans, artificial landscapes, again serving an ideal, are fused with apparently real parts of landscapes, taking ideas discussed above, further. As part of the same series shot in black and white, Wrede deals with human emotion. He portrayed people on a roller coaster, just at the moment of the rollercoaster diving down. The results are fascinating studies of human ecstasy, fear, and happiness all in one.
In his series “Picture Worlds”, his image “Freedom is sponsored by Diesel“ shot on a random crossing in Manhattan, depicts a huge billboard commercial with the lower half being the „real“ street scene. At first glance these two worlds are seamlessly woven into each other. The more time the viewer spends infront of the image the more it opens into many different questions.
As much as Wrede’s work amuses and has a sense of humour, they are also deeply critical images of society and its constructed theories. Concurrently each image in itself has a graphic power that one cannot forget easily.
Thomas Wrede studied at the art academy in Münster. He received numerous awards and scholarships e.g. Karl Hofer Preis, DG Bank Preis 1997, Fotografiepreis Wiesbaden 2002,
His work has been shown in many solo and group museum shows in Germany, Europe and the US. Thomas Wrede is one of the German shooting stars in the US.
Galerie f5,6
Ludwigstrasse 7 - Munich
Free admission