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Loredana Nemes |
On Wednesday, the 30th of June 2010 from 7 to 10 p.m., the Baukunst Galerie opens the large solo-show “Men” with photos of Loredana Nemes. Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, director of the photographic collection of the SK Stiftung Kultur will give an introduction in the œuvre of the native-born Rumanian artist. Her works were primarily presented by the gallery together with photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Sibylle Bergemann in the group-exhibition “Report” in 2009. Besides that this spring her photos were shown in the context of the promotional program “New Positions” at the Art Cologne. The current solo-exhibition faces the two series “Berlin's Men's Worlds” and “About Love”, which deal with the masculine self-presentation and ideas of love and ideology. In her gelatin silver prints on baryta paper Loredana Nemes visualizes the male world by taking pictures of Islamic coffee houses for men in her adopted city Berlin and documenting her chance encounters with male pedestrians by photos, texts and sound recordings during her travels through Europe and the USA in her wedding dress.
Loredana Nemes was born in 1972 in Sibiu, Rumania, fled to Germany in 1986 and today lives and works in Berlin. The autodidact sees the motivation of her anonymous approach to other people with her camera in this social dislocation and subsequent endeavour to affiliate. Thus she found an access to the homeland of her childhood in the series ”Rumanian Faces” (2001-2007) and portrayed the individuality and emotions of the people behind the stage of the magic world of the circus Roncalli in her series ”Behind the Curtain” (2001-2003). In ”Under Ground” (2005-2006) she succeeded to grasp those special moments of absent-mindedness and intimacy of passengers in subway vehicles during the short minutes of transit. With this last series, which was exhibited at the Museum für Kommunikation in Berlin and amongst others in Munich, Hamburg, Sibiu, Loredana Nemes gained great attention followed by reviews in the “FAZ”, “Die Zeit”, the “ART” magazine and on television at the SWR and the ARD. Thereupon the artist received professorships at the Zeppelin Universität in Friedrichshafen and the Art Academy Weißensee in Berlin.
Loredana Nemes unfolds the strength of her elaborately composed black and white photos with documentary ethos and emotional approach to the subject and hereby models on the pioneers of the report and street photography Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams and Elliott Erwitt. Thus in her series ”Berlin's Men's Worlds“ (since 2008) the artist takes pictures with her Linhof plate camera of the architectonic exterior view of the Turkish, Oriental and Arabic coffee houses in Berlin's districts Neukölln, Kreuzberg and Wedding, where she is not allowed to enter because of her gender and her culture. Besides the architectonic photographry she asks the male guests to stand behind the screens of curtains and frosted glass, which are characteristic for those institutions, in order portrait them. This way she visualizes the gender separation of women and men, which has become almost unknown in the Western culture but which is still part of the daily coexistence in many multicultural German cities. In this context the precise rendering of the details by the large-format camera subverts our curiosity about the foreign and unknown. At the same time the texture of the pictured screens transfers the veiling of Islamic women to the men and questions our involved patterns of thoughts.
This series is juxtaposed with the series “About Love“ (since 2006), where the artist – inspired by the œuvre of the artist Sophie Calle – involves herself in her photos for the first time. During her travels to Sibiu (RO), Washington, Madrid, Oslo, Berlin, Chania (GR) and Gent (B) she searches for a place on the streets with perfect light conditions. Then she installs a cloth, builds up her camera on a tripod, dons her wedding dress, takes the automatic release in her hand and waits for male pedestrians, who awake her interest. She always initiates the conversation with the same question: “Are you in love with a woman?”. Then she records the answer on a dictating machine and kindly asks the man to take a double portrait, where he stages himself together with her acting as his beloved woman. She allows every man to take three shots and then she selects one of them. This portrait is presented on a par with the transcribed text as 30 x 20 cm large gelatin silver prints which are accompanied by the original record of the statement of the portrayed person. In this series the artist, whose own planned marriage has never proceeded, wants to approach the mystery of love, which is sometimes fulfilling and sometimes failing. She exposes herself to foreigners in her wedding dress arousing positive emotions in almost every culture – and she is taken seriously. The statements of the men in their native language, which she often just understands by the non verbal communication of their gestures and facial expressions, are perceived by her as a very personal present, which she intuitively reflects in her own body language. This way her artwork bears an intimidate witness of the desires, aspirations and vulnerability of loving men – but also of the artist herself.
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