LAND_SCOPE. Fotoarbeiten von Roni Horn bis Thomas Ruff aus der DZ Bank Kunstsammlung

The exhibition and the catalogue are devoted to the depiction of landscape in postmodern and contemporary art photography. From the late eighteenth century onwards, the art of Romanticism shaped our idea of idyllic and sublime nature. Painters such as Philipp Otto Runge, but above all Caspar David Friedrich, pushed it into the focus of attention. Yet Friedrich already went beyond Runge’s symbolisation of universal creative power in metaphysical fantasy landscapes by working real landscape scenes, as a brilliant technical constructor, into pictures full of symbolic meaning. Many of these paintings captivate through their depiction of spatial expanse and emptiness, at once transporting and oppressive. It is a way of seeing that also characterises contemporary art photography, which increasingly turns its attention to the transformation of natural and cultivated landscapes and addresses the effects of industrialisation – including that of agriculture – and of urban sprawl. The book brings together works by some 60 artists from the holdings of the DZ BANK Kunstsammlung. Organised into seven chapters rich in pictures and texts, this survey thus presents the many ways in which artists are able to approach landscape in the medium of photography: various types of landscape are invoked, such as ideal landscapes or deserted settlements, political territories, agricultural landscapes; the formative forces and the potentials for abstraction in the photographic image are also brought out, so that landscape is negotiated as a conception or even appears as a digital construct.

Artists:
Lucinda Devlin, William Eggleston, Beate Gütschow, Raphael Hefti, Dan Holdsworth, Carsten Höller, Roni Horn, Axel Hütte, Magdalena Jetelová, Sven Johne, Peter Keetman, Robert Longo, Richard Mosse, Heinrich Riebesehl, Thomas Ruff, Adrian Sauer, Stephen Shore, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Anna Vogel et al.

Exhibition:
Münchner Stadtmuseum, 30/11/2018 – 26/5/2019