|
| help | media kit | about us | services | contact |
| |||
| |||
|
| ||
| NEWEST TRENDS . SEARCH . BUY . JOIN . COLLECT . RESEARCH . READ . DISCUSS | |||
| |||
|
Indepth Arts News: "Joachim Schmid Selected Photoworks 1982 – 2007" 2007-07-28 until 2007-10-15 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts San Francisco, CA, USA
Included in the exhibition is Bilder von der Straße (Pictures
from the Street), a work in progress since 1982. Known as Schmid’s signature series, he has selected 100 images, from a
collection of 900, which range from family snapshots and ID
photos to photo-booth discards from cities around the world.
These found photographs, creased, torn, weather-worn and sun
faded, tell a rich history. Another body of work, Photogenetic
Drafts (1991), repurposes negatives discarded by a studio
photographer who cut them in half to prevent future use. From
these, Schmid created photo-collages highlighting the
predictability of the commercial studio portrait as well as
offering a visual twist that is both ironic and unsettling. His
pairing of two distinct but strangely compatible headshots
explore questions of genetics, age, gender and identity. Belo
Horizonte, Praça Rio Branco, which consists of a cluster of 45
photographs, is a project that started in Brazil. The black and
white photos were rescued negatives found in the plaza of the
same name. They were cast-offs from street photographers who
produced cheap, while-you-wait ID photographs. Cyberspaces is a
series of photos that Schmid made about people in the online porn
industry. While capturing the screen when the subject has
stepped away from the sexcam, what’s depicted are the
surroundings of these young women. The blown up screen shots of
their working environments are low-res and pixilated, resulting
in unnerving images of an “empty stage.” The project is also a
way of questioning the nature of authentic experience in a
virtual domain. Two multi-channel digital photo installations,
Tausend Himmel (2005) and Menschen und Dinge (2006) are also
included in the exhibition.
Joachim Schmid began his career in the early 1980s as a
freelance critic and the publisher of Fotokritik, a German
photography resource. In 1987 Schmid focused on his own art
making, based primarily on found photography and public image
sources. In recent years, his work has taken him to the Internet
to create provocative works that reflect the future of
photography in a networked, global culture. His work is included
in major museum collections and he is a recipient of the
prestigious Mondriaan Prize of Holland, and was awarded a Konrad-
Adenauer-Stiftung grant by the city of Berlin in 2004. Schmid
lives and works in Berlin.
The publication, Joachim Schmid Photoworks 1982-2007,
published by Photoworks (UK), Tang Museum (USA) and Steidl
(Germany), will be on sale in conjunction with the exhibition.
|  |
|
|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
||
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is pleased
to present the mid-career retrospective of German artist Joachim
Schmid. The exhibition, organized by the Frances Young Tang
Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga
Springs, New York and The Photographers' Gallery, London,
features seven projects by Schmid that were produced between 1982
and 2007. As part of YBCA’s Reality Check series, one of the
three “big ideas” that guides programming for the 07-08 season,
the exhibition provokes its audiences to pause for a moment to
reexamine reality and regularly accepted norms.
Schmid is an artist whose work reveals a fascination with
photographic history. His use of “ongoing series,” demonstrates
his interest of photography as an all-encompassing discourse that
runs throughout the public and private spheres of modern life.
