01.03. – 14.05.2022


INGAR KRAUSS
DER HARTE KERN DER SCHÖNHEIT*
Opening: 26. Feb. 2022, 13-18 Uhr

The exhibition shows photographs by Ingar Krauss that trace the development and recurrence of nature as a theme in his work – from early portraits to his latest serial works. His pictures reflect a realism that is magical in a natural way: as a perception of the poetic, the surreal and sometimes the sinister in everyday life. An intensive experience of nature as well as animals and plants, their becoming and passing in a seasonal cycle, play an important role in this.

Krauss works solely with analogue equipment and preferably in black and white, i.e. in the darkroom. No computer is used in his image production and if he processes images he does by hand, with a paintbrush and varnish.

His genres are the classics of painting: portrait, still life and landscape. The photographer comes closest to painting with his still lifes and yet this series touches on fundamental questions of the photographic medium. Its depth, colour and consistency in the composition of the image reflect the first decade of the medium in the 19th century while at the same timing being of great clarity and rich in allusion.

Krauss finds his motifs in the rural surroundings of his studio. He builds stage-like boxes of different sizes for them and allows the fruits, plants and also animals to appear in them in a natural, virtually metaphysical light. Measured in terms of their presence, the pictures could also be seen as portraits of these things of nature that, being freed and eliminating of time to the same extent, become symbols of transience. One sees in them the slow development process: Krauss is a master of materiality. * Title based on a poem by William Carlos Williams

Ingar Krauss was born in East Berlin in 1965. He lives and works in Berlin and Oderbruch. He has been involved in numerous international exhibitions, for example at the Hayward Gallery (London), the Musée de l’Elysée (Lausanne), the Palazzo Vecchio (Florence) and the ICP (New York). His works are included in many collections, including the Hermès Collection (Paris), the Hasselbladfoundation (Goteborg) and the Berlinische Galerie (Berlin). Books of his work have been published by Hatje Cantz, Thames & Hudson, Mondadori Electa, Kerber, Skira Editore and Hartmann Books, among others.