Ulrich Wüst – Transitions
Loock Galerie is pleased to announce its cooperation with Ulrich Wüst, starting with the solo show "Transitions".
Ulrich Wüst was one of the most important photographers of the GDR. But beyond that, his work should be seen in a larger historical and international context of photographers like Albert Renger-Patzsch, August Sander, Bernd und Hilla Becher in Germany as well as Walker Evans and Stephen Shore in the US.
“Ulrich Wüst’s photography follows a clear visual principle. It is thoroughly articulated, the compositions are thought through down to the smallest detail, and they are literally architectural–also and indeed particularly when the photographs depict un-architecture.
In the spectrum of current possibilities of a objective-artistic photography, influenced in Germany since the 1970s above all by the school of Bernd and Hilla Becher, these works stand alone, there is no direct comparison.(Matthias Flügge, in: Ulrich Wüst, Morgenstraße Magdeburg 1998-2000, Magdeburg 2001, p. 10.)
The exhibition "Transitions" presents three work groups by Ulrich Wüst that narrate history. A cool observer of his time with a contentious relationship to social and political contradictions, Wüst shoots his photographs in Berlin, Magdeburg, and Cologne – three cities heavily marked by the destruction of the Second World War. His analytic, purist photographs of urban space, city structures, and architecture narrate and comment upon a significant chapter of German history in the throes of massive change. In 1994, as part of a Bewag-sponsored art project, Kasper König commissioned the series "Mitte" (Berlin 1995–1997). Restricting himself to the borough of Berlin-Mitte, Wüst photographed the demolition and construction of a city in the process of reinventing itself. In "Morgenstrasse" (Magdeburg 1998–2000), he presents an unadulterated view of the industrial city of Magdeburg, which was left to decay, while his series "Fremdes Pflaster" (Foreign Streets, Cologne 2004–2005) shows a city caught between tradition and reconstruction during the time of the post-war West German – economic miracle’. One of the unique features of Wüst’s photographs is their dialectic between an ostensible objectivity and an attention to detail that is both subjective and subversive.
The exhibition "Transitions" will be shown and curated by Gary van Zante in a modified form in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in cooperation with the MIT Museum.
Ulrich Wüst was represented in recent years in numerous exhibitions, among them Concrete – Fotografie und Architektur, Fotomuseum Winterthur (2013), Geschlossene Gesellschaft, Berlinische Galerie (2012), Abschied von Ikarus, Neues Museum Weimar and Ein neuer Blick – Architekturfotografie aus den Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek (2010), Ulrich Wüst, Leonhardi-Museum, Dresden und Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg, and Art of Two Germanys, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2009).
His works are part of important corporate and museum collections such as Photographische Sammlung der Berlinischen Galerie, Deutsche Genossenschaftsbank (Frankfurt am Main), Kunstsammlung des Deutschen Bundestages, Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstich-Kabinett (Berlin), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, and others.
Ulrich Wüst, born in 1949 in Magdeburg, has been living and working in Berlin since 1972.
Curated by Katia Reich
The exhibition is part of the 6th European Month of Photography Berlin.
6th European Month Of Photography Berlin
Opening: 17th October 2014
18th October 2014 - 31st January 2015