21.01. - 03.03.2012
Where history has written itself - Philipp Goldbach and photography
Philipp Goldbach (b. 1978) is exhibiting his work at the Galerie Gisèle Linder for the first time. The artist from Cologne takes things literally: (Greek) photos – light – and graphein – to draw, to write. With the image-producing technique of photography, he exposes and describes material that would have normally remained undiscovered. This project is the result of the ars viva recipient’s particular interest in the relationship between photography and writing.
In its treatment of the historical use of university blackboards, the series “Tafelbilder” (panel paintings, literally also [black]board images; 2003, 2008-11) offers a definitive expression of this tendency. At the beginning of the series, the former philosophy student was attracted by the prospect of tracing the paths of well-known German intellectuals among the places where they taught. However, he and his camera found more in the university lecture halls than a historical aura. The many blackboards bore diverse remnants of instruction: scribbled formulas, fragments of words, and patterns left by sponges, where an occasional letter still shone through. Goldbach’s “Tafelbilder” reveal the process of recording and deleting which is inherent to these diverse ‘inscriptions’. Not only superimposed layers of time, but also the concept of scientific progress – the rethinking of the given and the implementation of the new – become visible. In addition to these reflections stemming from the use of the blackboard, Goldbach also confronts the viewer with a further level of meaning, one that is already implicit in the title: the panel painting (Tafelbild) is an elementary form of pictorial representation, which was developed in the context of icon painting. The association of the open blackboard with a triptych (which implies a winged altar in the realm of Christian imagery) is hardly astonishing in this context; however, it still comes as a surprise.
“Phototype” (2011), another series by Goldbach, will be on view in the Galerie Gisèle Linder’s intimate cabinet, which is used for the display of works on paper. With the rigour of an archivist, Goldbach collected matrix plates from old phototypesetters. Digital printing has since rendered this process obsolete; but, in the 1950s, it provided a direct link between analogue photography and writing. However, in place of the normal product of this procedure, i.e. a typeset text, Goldbach produces an image of the entire plate. That which would otherwise remain invisible – the plate with its letters and symbols – is presented to our view.
Philipp Goldbach’s work uses photography to reveal not only how writing – and thus history as well – inscribes itself upon media (“Tafelbilder”), but also how specific media (“Phototype”) once wrote and revealed history with the help of technology. In the gallery’s garden, the artist will be exhibiting an installation in the form of an unconventional work in progress. In its own distinct way, this work illustrates how external influences shape a surface and create an image.
November 2011 |
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