Opening Reception for "Heimat" at station21

I co-curated a show on the topic of home, or Heimat, for the fall exhibition and events cycle at station21 in Zürich. Here are some pictures from the opening reception on October 24th, 2013.

Oscar and me with Tom Licht's "DaHeim" in the Background (Photo: © Tom Licht)

Laura and Olivia (Photo: © Tom Licht)

Oscar and me with Farida Heuck's video in the background (Photo: © Tom Licht)

"Brockt" @ station21

The new team of station21 (which I had joined at the end of last year) pulled off the initial idea of mine to arrange an exhibition around the premise of buying paintings in a second-hand store (or locally called a "Brockenhaus") and asking artists to change them as they see fit. Some of the artists we approached are based in Zürich, but others worked remotely from elsewhere (e.g. New York or Sydney). The latter did their interventions via mail and/or email instructions. The resulting exhibition was not the most successful, but quite intriguing nonetheless. It was our first, after all. 

We miss New York ...

A short visit to the City. So many good memories.

ewz portfolio review

I will be reviewing portfolios as part of the ewz portfolio review days in Zürich this week.

Barbara Jo Revelle

Leafing through the German edition of the Catalog Raisonné "Cindy Sherman: The Early Works" at the bookstore here in Zürich the other day, I came across the pages where Sherman as a student at Buffalo State College and my former grad school teacher, Barbara Jo Revelle, crossed paths, which concludes with this sentence: "Sherman calls Revelle as 'my influential college professor in photography.'" And I can only agree, Revelle had been a most excellent professor, always very generous with her time and insights and subsequently one of the most influential professors I have had - and I am confident that the same is true for many of the thousands of students she has had during her teaching career. Last year, Barbara Jo Revelle retired from teaching and will probably spent most of her time now on her equally prolific career as a (quite radical) artist, working mostly in photography, video and performance. She will be missed as a teacher, but we look forward to seeing her work gaining some appreciation!

Lecture at the University of Zürich

On Friday, January 28th, I gave a 90-minute lecture on the "Photography Market" to students in the Executive Master program in Art Market Studies at the University of Zürich. It certainly was a new subject for me in regards to teaching, but I had been invited here to speak in my function as Gallery Director rather than artist. So, I embraced the challenge and ended up really enjoying the presentation and subsequent Q&A session.

2011 was a year of new beginnings ...

More "Heimat", now in Switzerland. I look forward to updating and completing "Critical Distance", amongst other and new projects.

People who may have been to this blog in recent months, may have wondered about the relative inactivity here. That's because aside from our new family addition, Olivia Claire (b. 7/5/11 in New York), I have started a great new job as the Zürich director of the Galerie Edwynn Houk and re-located the entire family for that reason to Switzerland in August. Therefore, most of my time was spent becoming familiar to a daughter and her schedule, a new job and home. I haven't stopped photographing, and I even started new projects, but there had been less time devoted to processing the work and trying to have it seen. I hope this will change in 2012. There is plenty on the burners. So, please keep checking this blog and my website (By the way: I am looking for someone to change and update my website. If you know someone who can do it on a reasonable budget, please drop me a line.). Thank you.

Happy Holidays!

Lecture and Panel Discussion

Today, I held a lecture on Contemporary Photography ("The Impact of Digital Technologies on Photography") at a charity "Fotoseminar" benefitting the Johanna Heumann Foundation at the House Metropol of the Bank Clariden Leu, Zurich. Nanny Baltzer of the University Zurich presented before me a "Stroll through the History of Photography". Afterwards, I participated in a panel discussion on photography that eventually circled back to my presentation of digital technologies and photography, and became quite heated over the argument whether "digital photography" and its practice can be called photography and art at all. I was rather surprised that technology rather than image content are still taken as the determining factor for the inclusion in the "sacred world" of Art and/or Art Photography. That seems to be the old but updated discussion about photography as art ... Interesting, indeed.

For it's urgency: "Work" (2005)

An older piece of mine, called "Work" (from the 2005 series "Heim|Fern|Weh"). No less timely today I think ...