translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
290713: Museum of the Moderne Salzburg Rupertinum: Matthias Herrmann
Museum of the Moderne Salzburg Rupertinum: Matthias Herrmann
16.06.13 to 22.09.13
Self-portrait as Janus head
By Daniela Gregori
The expression could stay stuck to the unrolled film as a fly on one of these old fashioned adhesive traps. Almost a vanitas still life, a meditation about the transience of one of the completely usual mediums of not so long ago. That, too, is also a form of self-reflection. After all the years of sexually charged works, it was two decades and eight years as Professor for "Art and Photography" before Matthias Herrmann rendered his thoughts about recognizability, about the success of individual pictures, took an interest again in the photographic process as such.
He had often left self-stagings with citations behind him, went on journeys and one was amazed when the results of these changes of direction were presented last autumn in the Viennese Gallery Steinek (which artmagazine reported on). All of them travel pictures are devoid of people, slightly melancholic and very exactly formulated.
Matthias Herrmann has now been awarded the "Otto Breicha Prize for Photographic Art 2013" in Salzburg, occasion enough to recall the complete oeuvre of the artist, born 1963 in Munich. It ranges from his most recent works to the chronology of his personal reflections, to daily scenes, to art and its presentation in a spatial context, and to the "Secession Pieces". From this point on in the exhibition, one comes quite retrospectively across things well known and much loved.
There, in the abundance of the "Text_Pieces", the "Hotel" series or the "Junior Line", it becomes clear that the artist eventually had to break away from the recognizability of his work. Until one discovers in a glass case two silver gelatine prints from the year 1988, when Herrmann changed from the ballet ensemble of the Vienna State Opera to a student at the High School for Applied Arts. The young artist in (half) profile, mirrored, so that a Janus head is revealed. And somehow, these two early works also stand for the option of a change in direction. All the locations of the travel pictures, also the so exactly set-in-the-scene analogue technique of photography, all the motifs of the latest works by Matthias Herrmann have possibly seen better times. Nevertheless, they simply add up to these very precise documents of a life world. On that note: the varnish is off, long live brilliance!
Museum of the Moderne Salzburg Rupertinum
5010 Salzburg, Wiener Philharmonikergasse 9,
Tel: +43 662 8042 2541
Fax: +43 662 8042 2542
http://www.museumdermoderne.at/
Opening hours: Tue-Sun 10-17, Wed 10-21 hours
290713
Museum der Moderne Salzburg Rupertinum
5010 Salzburg, Wiener Philharmonikergasse 9
Tel: +43 662 84 22 20.451, Fax: +43 662 84 22 20.750
Email: info@museumdermoderne.at
http://www.museumdermoderne.at/
Öffnungszeiten: Di-So 10-18, Mi 10-20h
Museum der Moderne Salzburg Rupertinum
5010 Salzburg, Wiener Philharmonikergasse 9
Tel: +43 662 84 22 20.451, Fax: +43 662 84 22 20.750
Email: info@museumdermoderne.at
http://www.museumdermoderne.at/
Öffnungszeiten: Di-So 10-18, Mi 10-20h