LEWIS BALTZ - DAVID REED - DIANGO HERNÁNDEZ

 

DC OPEN 2011

 

On the occasion of the DC OPEN 2011 the Galleries Schmidt Maczollek, Michael Wiesehöfer, and Thomas Zander present a selection of works by the artists Lewis Baltz, Diango Hernández, and David Reed in the Forum für Fotografie.

 

Gallery Thomas Zander shows works from Lewis Baltz from his series “89/91 Sites of Technology,” which were seen for the first time in a solo show in the gallery in 2007.

 

Lewis Baltz has long been a topographer and a form seeker. His photographic series document places that, as epiphenomena of industrial civilization, lay outside the canon of perception; empty building lots, industrial wastelands, warehouses. These two characteristic features of Baltz's photographs are also at work in the series 89/91. Here, however, form seeker and topographer are united in the figure of the spy. He penetrates the arcane realms of society where, in the functionality of the high-tech working world and in the design of computer technologies, he finds prototypes of modern design at the borderline between art and design. Baltz uncovers the invisible and reveals nothing. Ultimately, this interest in unyielding surfaces, their forms, colours and materials, is the key by which Baltz seeks to unlock not the mysteries of technology but the mystery of photographic representation in 89/91. The catalogue Lewis Baltz – 89/91 is published by Steidl and will be shortly published anew.

 

Gallery Schmidt Maczollek shows works by David Reed, who above all is known for his dynamic and three-dimensional-like paintings. In the group show, he presents the painting #526-2 from 2011 as well as the video installation Las Vegas Piece from 1996. In this vertical format painting, Reed’s concept of abstract painting is expressed: an all-over, repetitive loops, sweeps, waves, and seemingly gestural brushstrokes thrown onto the pictoral surface.

 

The installation Las Vegas Piece integrates the painting #358 from 15 years ago in a total of eight different constellations: it itself hangs on the wall of the actual space, it appears on six monitors in videos of earlier exhibition situations, and it also doubled in two looped scenes on a flat screen TV on the wall. On the flat screen is shown an original scene from the film Crime Story by Michael Mann and a reenactment of the same scene by the team from David Reed Studios. Reed has digitally superimposed the painting into the original scene from Crime Story, the “studio version” it hangs on the wall of his studio in New York. With his installation he succeeds in deploying traditional themes of painting like reality and illusion, movement and statis, light and shadow, color and form not just intrinsically in the image, but also to explore their impact merging with new media.

 

Galerie Michael Wiesehöfer shows two works by the Cuban artist Diango Hernández, whose work in recent years has garnered attention at different Biennales; he lives and works in Düsseldorf since 2005.