Cu r ate d by S e b as t i e n M o nt a b o n e l

Pr i v ate v i ew : T hu r s day 7 t h Ap r i l 2011, 6 – 9 p m

E x hib i t i o n: 8 t h Ap r i l – 4 t h J u n e 2011

B iSCh o ff/ W EiSS

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14A h ay h i l l , Lo n d o n W1J 8 NZ

o p e nin g t im e s : Tu e s day – S atu rday | 10 am – 6 p m

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P h o T o G R A P h S

M i C h A E L R E i S C h

BiSChoff/ WEiSS

P h o T o G R A P h S

M i C h A E L R E i S C h

“The ideas of the sublime and the beautiful stand on foundations so different, that it is hard, I had almost said impossible, to think of reconciling them in the same subject, without considerably lessening the effect of the one or the other upon the passions’’

Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, (1767)

in Michael Reisch’s photography, what Edmund Burke deemed impossible comes into fruition. With an expert awareness of scale, he creates subjects so vast and imposing as to render the drama of the Sublime, yet does so in a manner so technically and conceptually accomplished that one cannot deny the beauty of the results.

having exhibited all over Europe amongst some of the biggest names in contemporary art, including Gerhard Richter and Andreas Gursky, it is clear that he is establishing a position at the forefront of his field. BiSChoff/WEiSS and i are proud to introduce him in his first UK solo exhibition.

– Sebastien Montabonel

Sebastien Montabonel joined Phillips de Pury & Co in January 2009 as European Senior Specialist in Contemporary Photography. Prior to this, he worked as an adviser on some of the largest corporate and private photographic collections. he has won numerous awards in the creative world for his work in advertising, graphics and strategy. Sebastien is the founder of Alaska Editions, specializing in the high-end publishing of contemporary photography, a board adviser for an international art fund based in Paris and is the Creative Partner for Sanderson Studios. he’s also the initiator of the “Private Collector” project in partnership with Phillips de Pury and the Saatchi Gallery, which brings to the public some of the most important private art collections. in early 2010 he orchestrated the francks-Suss Collection and this year he secured the Juan Yarur Contemporary Art Collection in partnership with the Chilean Ministry of foreign Relations. he’s also a Nominator for the Prix Pictet.

B E Y o N d E d E N

Garden Eden exists. And is flourishing. At least, if one wants to believe the sentimental picture language of tourism advertising. or the prescription of dr. Schreber’s allotment garden. With other words: the earthly paradise is a human invention. it is this one, glorifying, conception of landscape. The one of the barren, indomitable and almighty nature is the other. Both play part in Michael Reisch’s photographic works, which are effectively situated beyond Eden. They are alternative drafts to paradise, however, not in the sense of a postapocalyptic, misanthropic hell, but as a de-romanticised, deserted over-perfection. Because one thing is evident immediately: over these nurtured, light mountainsides no bucolic shep-herd will guide his drove. in this shielded bay no sailor will drop his anchor. Unthinkable it seems to be that an alpinist would be capable to climb his mountain peak. one would, if one simply could. But these landscapes lock themselves. They neither want to be cultivated nor can they be conquered. Arcadia is lost forever.

The works of Micheal Reisch’s series 7/000 are based on actual landscapes, which he depicts with a digi-tal large-format-camera and later edits on the computer. Reisch removes every sign that would allow a specific geographical reference, every narrative element which could point to any tangible habitat. All traces of civilization are erased from the image. The colour scale is decreased to a monochrome continuum. however, plausible proportions are preserved. in Landscape 7/001 (2007), there stretches a vast, green valley into unreachable distance, where the logic of the inner pictorial space stays intact. Even though the observer might have a premonition that he would never come across a supposedly untouched landscape like this, by detail acuity and variety the photographs suggest a documentary picture-language and therefore reality. however, Reisch’s work is very different from the documentary photography propagated by the so-called Becher-School in düsseldorf. his way of interrogating reality is not dictated by the primacy of the biggest possible objectivity. Rather, Reisch aims at exposing the picture-immanent construction of reality and thus forms a stark contrast to the preceeding generation – Gursky, Struth and hütte.

The tension between invention and reality revealed in Reisch’s work endows contradictory emotions of separation and familiarity. This confusion is part of the aesthetic program. it is most obvious where one is able to identify single landscape elements. Thus, in Landscape 7/016 (2008) Reisch has inserted the emblematic summit of the Matterhorn in an alpine snow-clad mountain range, which is not consistent with the actual topography in any way. The picture avoids the recollected motives spread by touristic mass media, which have become incorporated into the collective memory.

But Reisch takes his transformation a step further when he plays with the appearance of the sublime in his panoramic modelling. And it is a highly subtle game that he plays with us. Since the 18th century the success of the landscape genre within the painting tradition has been closely connected to its symbolic augmentation into soul-landscapes. on the one hand it makes use of the romantic longing of a pictur-esque, Arcadian idyll, offering shelter from civil alienation. on the other hand it applies the aesthetics of the sublime, solemn terror, and indulgent shivering in the heroic landscape, where nature is perceived as insurmountable and overwhelming. it is the deconstruction of the latter in which Reisch is interested. Although he dispenses with shock effects, which show the basis and abyss of the human soul, his com-positions still give off a threatening atmosphere. he creates this by a carefully plotted play of light and shadow in connection with an even sculptural shaping. Everything is controlled, the beauty as well as

the material violence which is installed in this nature. different from works by Caspar david friedrich for example, where The Wanderer / der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, where a world rambler glances over the peaks and the fog into aesthetic regions, in which a peaceful God has silenced, at Reisch’s landscapes we are threatened by an indistinguishable adversity. his artificial, inanimate landscapes own no catharsis. Quite the contrary: Especially in the interaction of elevations and dips of his mountain scenarios something seems to arise from the darkness, in his boulder deserts lies a huge, menacing shadow over meagre stony hills (Landscape 7/012, 2008), his waters are sinisterly silent, profound and still (Landscape 7/021, 2009).

But the actual underlying distinctiveness is: Reisch stages this without false pathos. he does not want to show a nature humiliated by the human being which strikes back. he constitutes ideas of landscapes, their spreadings, stretchings and accumulations which answer our media shaped conception of and experience with landscape. A landscape which cannot become reality and has never been reality either. “Landscape as biomass between paradise and the nightmare of genetic engineering,” this is how Reisch describes our contemporary idea of nature. he does not hide the beauty of nature, he broaches the issue of landscape as a still valid civic ideal of the Garden Eden, but demonstrates it as a mere construc-tion. The desire for an arcadia formed and repacified by the human hand may linger on, with our real existence it does have little congruences.

The works exhibited at BiSChoff/WEiSS reveal a consistent development towards increasing abstrac-tion within Reisch’s oeuvre. Apart from the panoramic modelling of entire mountain ranges and monu-mental rock formations, this is the first time Reisch shows black-and-white images that are devoid of all discernable topographic reference. They are completely imaginary landscapes solely owing their pa-nache to the finely modulated nuances of grey. The landscape concept no longer appears to be an ideal space conceived of by humans, but instead it has become a free-floating and virtual associative space.

Eric Aichinger

Michael Reisch, born in 1964 in Aachen, Germany. Lives and works in düsseldorf.

forthcoming exhibitions include: Peter Lav Gallery, Copenhagen, denmark (2011) Alpenlandschaft, Residenzgalerie,Salzburg; Austria (2011) Permanent Collection, Photography Gallery at National Galler-ies, Edinburgh (2011)

Solo exhibitions include: Galerie hengesbach, Berlin (2010), Kunsthalle Erfurt, Germany (2008), Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland (2007), Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Germany (2007), Landesgalerie am Landesmuseum oberösterreich, Linz, Austria (2007), fotomuseum im Stadtmuseum, Munich (2006)

Group exhibitions include: Realismus - das Abenteuer der Wirklichkeit Kunsthalle Emden; Kunsthalle der hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich, Kunsthal Rotterdam (2010), Sammlung XXL, Kunstraum Alexander Bürkle, freiburg (2009), Architecture-Biennale Venice, italy, with b&k+brandlhuber (2008), Gezähmte Natur, Brandenburgische Kunstsammlungen, Cottbus (2004), Modellierte Wirklichkeiten, Landesgalerie am Landesmuseum oberösterreich Linz, Austria (2003), Zwischen Konstruktion und Wirklichkeit, Suer-mondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen (2002)