Von mir aus. New Photography from Düsseldorf

Conrad Müller, Donja Nasseri, Arisa Purkpong, Alexander Romey

Von mir aus features four young artists who realize their creative expression in the medium of photography. The title, which was chosen by the artists, signifies their intensive engagement with themselves and their environment: What does it mean to be in the world? Where and how do I position myself? Photography is the medium of our time and acts as a complex visual memory. It belongs to the collective everyday language, a language that is fast-paced and produces an abundance of images that are aimed at maximum subjectivity. Over the past few decades, digital techniques and devices have increasingly changed photographic processes as well as the editing and aesthetics of images. Rapid technical development allows images to circulate universally in virtual space. How do we receive images today? What do we remember about them? And what images are worth remembering?

The young artists long for individual freedom and a return to the essential. They think about the medium, examine the current status of the image, and freely make use of all possibilities. These naturally include combinations of analog and digital techniques as well as all methods of developing film and presenting photos. The artists experiment with painting, sculpture, video, writing, and sound.

Von mir aus means trying out new things and thus questioning and changing one’s relationship to photography. For this exhibition, Conrad Müller, Donja Nasseri, Arisa Purkpong, and Alexander Romey collaborated artistically and intellectually. They are shaped by their environment, life at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the knowledge and experience they gain there, and their exchanges with other artists.

At KIT they will bring together works that they created specifically for this exhibition. They place us, as observers, in the middle of a staging that presents itself in a minimalist, opulent, sensual, or mysterious way, and also palpably deals with the architecture of the exhibition space. Their works invite us to see and feel intensively—an invitation that can make us aware of how photography shapes our reality today.

Curated by Gertrud Peters

 
The exhibition is funded by