Works by Simone Nieweg, August Kotzsch and Sora Park in the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne
The photographs of Simone Nieweg (exhibition title: „Plants, Sheds, Arable Land: Working in Nature“) and August Kotzsch („Nature, Landscape, Genre“) show discoveries made in the landscape of intriguing objects both natural and human-made. Their juxtaposition makes for an exciting encounter between contemporary and historical photography. Also on view will be recent portraits and still lifes by Sora Park, 2022 August Sander Award winner („With me, with you. Portraits and Still Lifes“).
„You have to hurry up if you want to see something; everything disappears.“ This observation made by the French Impressionist Paul Cezanne based on his own experience also applies to the work of photographer Simone Nieweg (b. 1962). For the master student in Bernd Becher“s class at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, the view of nature and the arable land created by human hand formed important starting points for her artistic work back in the 1980s. Even then, she was already preoccupied by urgent questions about how we treat our natural resources. Her color photographs, which Nieweg shoots in the Rhineland and other regions of Germany as well as in France using a large-format camera, draw our attention to the often overlooked outskirts of towns and industrial areas. They highlight the aesthetic qualities that unfold when these still un-zoned areas are cultivated in a limited fashion, usually upon individual initiative, for gardening or agriculture. Elements that give the land structure and continuity are captured here: alternative allotment gardens, future building land, patches of meadow, fields going to seed with wild vegetation, vegetable beds, plowed fields in winter, or blossoming fruit trees as harbingers of spring. Structures built by simple means, whether sheds or compost racks, reveal themselves to be typical components of their particular landscapes.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an eponymous catalogue, published by Schirmer/Mosel Verlag.
August Kotzsch (1836-1910), one of the early masters of German photography, offers a historical counterpart to Simone Nieweg. He takes us with him on his rambles through nature in his home region of Loschwitz near Dresden. Landscape scenes, garden corners, still lifes, and the fruits of his own harvest, but also houses and farms, were his preferred motifs. Depicting in loving detail, these cherished views paint an at once realistic and romantic picture of his surroundings. A self-taught photographer and son of a winemaker, Kotzsch used a complex process to produce his photographs. He made his negatives using the wet collodion process, and his prints on albumen paper. Thanks to this method, his images shimmer in iridescent sepia tones.
The works on loan come from the estate of August Kotzsch in cooperation with KICKEN BERLIN. They are complemented by exhibits from the in-house collection.
Sora Park (b. 1991 in Gimpo, South Korea) received the August Sander Award in 2022 for her project „With me, with you.“ In addition to a representative selection from the award-winning series, the show also features photographic still lifes in which the artist transforms everyday found items and materials into imaginative objects.
„With me, with you“ shows young women and men from Sora Park“s inner circle as well as fellow students at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. The photographs are for the most part individual portraits taken either in the photographer“s own home or in those of the sitters. With her analogue large-format camera, Park always takes only one exposure, which lends added intensity to her well-balanced compositions. In the series, the artist introduces us to a young generation working in the artistic-creative milieu as a crucial life phase along the way toward finding their identity.
New exhibition will be presented as of November. The presentation of works by Sora Park will be followed by photographs by Laurenz Berges.
With its collection, the scholarly maintenance of its holdings, its research projects, and its exhibitions, all of which center around objective, documentary photography, Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur contributes to a wide range of regional, national, and international artistic and cultural offerings.The institution“s collection comprises more than 30,000 works by historical and contemporary photographers of various nationalities. A significant share of these-more than 10,500 negatives and 5,500 original prints-is part of the August Sander Archive, followed by negatives and prints from important series by the artist couple Bernd and Hilla Becher. These two photographic stances, are since 1992 and 1996, in terms of style and content decisive for the further development of the collection.
There are two to three exhibitions a year, most of them accomponied by publications compiled at Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur. Presentations are organized that are assembled from the institution“s own collection as well as displays of works that enter into a dialogue with it. The exchange with regional, national, and international institutions plays an important role, as evidenced by numerous collaborative exhibition projects and a lively circulation of loans.
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Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur
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Phone: +4922188895300
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Url: http://www.photographie-sk-kultur.de
Press
SK Stiftung Kultur der Sparkasse KölnBonn
Ralf Convents
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50670 Köln
Phone: +4922188895105
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Url: http://www.sk-kultur.de
Bildquelle: © Simone Nieweg, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023