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Raffael Waldner: Fiat Coupé 2.0 Turbo, C-Print, Ed. 3, 180 x 240 cm | | |
Spielhaus Morrison Galerie presents
Raffael Waldner - Crystal Peak
Opening: Saturday, 25 . November, at 6 p.m.
Exhibition dates: 25th November - 13th January 2007
In his debut solo exhibition in Germany the young Swiss artist Raffael Waldner shows photos of crashed sports cars, destroyed luxury watches and a video, in which he drives his own Porsche to scrap iron. The car wreck is part of the installation "Crystal Peak", which Spielhaus Morrison Galerie is showing as the second exhibition in their new rooms, in the new gallery location Heidestrasse, behind the Hamburger Bahnhof.
Raffael Waldner combines techniques of staged and documentary photography in his artistic process. In the series "Sites" pictures of car-accidents found in the Zürich Police archives have the vehicles digitally removed from them and replaced with purely scenic elements. The notion of something terrible as latent danger nevertheless remains palpable in the landscape photo. Waldner has his shutter-finger on the pulse with his images of destroyed fetish objects of luxury consumption. The naive, nearly childlike desire for the destruction of these Golden Calves such as sports cars and clocks has something liberating and disarming about it. The "Disgraced Objects" also take on an abstract sculptural beauty, which is far beyond the original destructive motive. Raffael Waldners message is clear: he destroys consumer goods and creates from them something new, something significant: Art.
The constructional strength of the destruction also features in the newest series of puzzling landscapes, which are reminiscent of satellite pictures. They are in fact close-ups of rotten food. Luscious colour structures reveal the beauty of the organic one and become the opposite image of its origin - decay. Here Raffael Waldner is at his most assured with his most characteristic topic, the creation of the new through destruction. |
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