Thomas Wrede
dal 12/3/2009 al 24/4/2009
Segnalato da
12/3/2009
Thomas Wrede
Wagner+Partner (old location), Berlin
Real Landscapes. Forces of nature and human pioneering spirit collide in Wrede's eerily beautiful landscape productions. The photographs are an intelligent tongue-in-cheek play with micro- and macro-perception, with naturalness and artificiality. One looks down from airy highs onto real, seductive landscapes, which the artist, using small models, turns into romantic places of yearning.
Forces of nature and human pioneering spirit collide in Thomas Wrede’s eerily
beautiful landscape productions. The photographs are an intelligent tongue-in-cheek
play with micro- and macro-perception, with naturalness and artificiality. One looks
down from airy highs onto real, seductive landscapes, which the artist, using small
models, turns into romantic places of yearning. Thomas Wrede has consistently
developed his series „Real Landscapes“ since 2004 and attracted great interest with
it internationally.
The photographic picture composition is comparable in its drama with Caspar David
Friedrich’s paintings. The precision of details, the careful layout of the line
suggesting a vastness of the landscape and not least the atmospheric colouring of
the skies produce a brittle beauty. Faced by such forces of nature the viewer
quickly loses their feeling of security. Instead of choreographed grandeur appear
striking pictures of nearly unbearable borderline experiences. Comparing Friedrich’s
„Das Eismeer“ (The Sea of Ice) with Wrede’s work „Bergrutsch“ (Landslide), the
parallels are astonishing.
But instead of people Wrede chooses models of houses and vehicles as projection
screens. These human traces appear strangely lost and fragile, or even displaced,
like the lonely football field under floodlights. What are the builders looking for
in this solitude? Or is the real question what on Earth are they doing there?
The photographic works of Thomas Wrede show Utopia as well as loss. The archetypal
landscapes also appear to be beyond space and time, they reflect our collective
landscape image, as it has been established in traditional landscape painting and
reproduced in countless media images. In Wrede’s picture-worlds we recognise these
landscapes and feel safe. And more than that, it is as if the artist has found the
essence for us: a landscape vision in which longing and fear peacefully coexist.
Opening Reception with the artist Friday 13.03., 19-22 h
Wagner+Partner
Karl-Marx-Allee 87 - Berlin
Free admission