Human Trans_Mission. Sophie Ramirez (SOFF) on the trail of the “absurd phenomenon of being human”.

Loud and trendy, or futuristic and downright cosmic, Sophie Ramirez alias SOFF poses on the photos of her brightly coloured Instagram-Feeds. When meeting the student of Kunstakademie Düsseldorf privately, you get a surprise. Her extraordinary styling is not just a means of her staging, but an expression of her personality. Make-up, clothing – everything is loud, stands out from what is usually described as "normal". SOFF lives this style. Bold, and impressively self-confident! But, what exactly is her art? Doesn't SOFF fall into the rather more superficial category of pop culture or, is she simply a good model? I wanted to find out and go and visit her in her live-in studio ... (to read more, tap on photo)
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The toxic building – How Jan Glisman turned the deconstruction of the Deutsche Welle towers into a multimedia art project

All Jan Glisman really wanted to do was to "just" document a spectacular event in Cologne: The demolition of all three parts of the 138-metre-high Deutsche Welle broadcasting tower, the third-highest building in the city. The funding had been approved, the plans worked out, but then - everything turned out quite differently. The risk to the broadcasting operations of Deutschlandfunk, which is connected by a common foundation slab, and the spread of asbestos fibres feared by residents in the neighbourhood had prevented the blasting. “Blasting” therefore became "deconstruction". A process that was to extend over a total of five years and challenged Glisman to document precisely that period. Huge numbers of photos, video material and drawings were initially created without any concrete idea of what was to happen with them ...

Frederic Auerbach – Focus on the Fashion and Celebrity Photographer, Episode 4 of the series “Behind the Arts”

No matter if it is a DIOR campaign with Sharon Stone, Natalie Portman or Sophie Marceau, PORSCHE campaign with Patrick Dempsey or stylish stagings for editorial pictures in luxury magazines like VOGUE, ELLE or FLAUNT ... it is always Frederic Auerbach who is responsible for those iconic images. Born and raised in Switzerland, he was first drawn to Paris before his work finally took him to Los Angeles. At the Sander Gallery in Düsseldorf, his photographs were presented in an art context for the first time. Beside the opportunity to talk to him about his life and work I was also given the chance to gain a practical impression of his photographic approach as a model afterwards ...

Alex Grein – Ephemeral: photographically “exposed“

Cell phone holders, blocks of ice, dissecting tables, frozen matter in a freezer, viscous matter in canisters, photographs in deformed frames, and butterflies on video screens. Although I haven’t seen them, the mere listing makes me more than curious about this exhibition. How can we connect all of these, such different works? A first idea is conveyed in the exhibition title „d a  u   e    r“ ...
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Stefan Heyne – The interaction of stage setting and photography

Cologne, 2 December 2020. What a privilege! Flanked by the stage director Tatjana Gürbaca and the production designer Stefan Heyne (while maintaining social distancing, of course), I am invited to take my seat and watch the performance of "Die tote Stadt" at the Cologne Opera. Apart from me, the experience of this event is granted to only a handful of guests, seated at intervals in the otherwise empty auditorium. The actors are visibly excited. It is, after all, the recording of the live stream of the new production of the work, which was premiered on the 4 December 1920 in Cologne, directed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Exactly one hundred years later it is transformed into the present. A present, which, for a long time, made it impossible for the actors to work in their field and which will continue to deprive opera goers of the live experience for an indefinite period. The production, modified for these conditions, attempts a new approach: Opera live, but at home in front of the screen ...

Louisa Clement – Can physical emptiness be filled digitally?

Bonn. Can physical emptiness be filled digitally? How do the interpersonal relationships change in the era of digitalisation? These are questions that occupy Louisa Clement’s mind and have been occupying mine ever since I visited her. I increasingly understand the power of digital communication which currently appears to help us to mainly maintain the contact with the outside world – while the pandemic is raging. “Your Likes made my day “, so popular now, is assuming a worrying underton …

Fabio Borquez – Photography noir? – A studio visit in seven scenes

Before starting in an unaccustomed and unusual way, a short explanation of the idea generating process: I met Fabio Borquez for the first time at the beginning of 2020. The reason was his impressive exhibition Flores del Mal at Schloss Benrath in Düsseldorf. On view were photos of nude women who formed almost symbiotic creatures in artistic productions with flowers. The opulent ambience of the castle created the perfect backdrop.

Volker Hermes – Hidden Portraits – Just masquerade?

Düsseldorf-Unterbilk. Even though his Hidden Portraits, which are creations of photographic art and are currently going through the ceiling, may not suggest it at first glance, Volker Hermes is a painter. Originally his very specialised portraits were not planned as an independent series of works, but merely as studies on the history of painting. Similarly, until July 2020 the artist considered Instagram to be an unsuitable medium for presenting his art. But then everything turned out surprisingly different ...