From Becher to Blume – Photographs from the Garnatz Collection and Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in Dialogue

Exhibition: 12 March – 8 August 2021

The exhibition can only be visited with advance registration, ensuring traceability. Online tickets can be purchased on the website www.sk-kultur.de.

The exhibition "From Becher to Blume" provides in-depth insights in particular into the influential photography of the 1980s and 90s, a period that produced a number of innovative bodies of work and concepts. A central role is played by the Rhineland, home to numerous artists, museums, and galleries.

The collector couple Ute and Eberhard Garnatz were part of this extremely lively scene, and began as early as the 1970s to pursue their collecting activities with great dedication. In addition to amassing a large number of paintings, sculptures, and prints, they also built a distinctive and remarkably diverse collection of photographs, some of them dating back to the 1950s but for the most part produced during the 1980s to the 2000s. During that decade, photography was more and more becoming part of the fine arts cosmos. The medium resolutely carved out a place for itself with and alongside the traditional genres. And the collectors followed this development with an alert eye. Keeping pace with the times, they began to focus on artists who used the photographic image as basis for their work and for whom the camera was hence a matter-of-fact technical tool in their artistic practice. Some of these artists chose the documentary image as their springboard, while others were far less interested in the medium’s ability to faithfully reproduce reality and instead ventured into experimental realms. There were also those who attempted to confound the world of objects in their photos, or who staged or made use of the chemical nature of the photographic process to arrive at pictorial works in a more painterly idiom.

Showcasing the Garnatz Collection offers Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur the opportunity to arrange photographs from both collections in a productive dialogue. A common denominator can be found in particular in the works of Bernd and Hilla Becher, while photographers including Boris Becker, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, and Thomas Struth are likewise represented in both collections. The exhibition furthermore places rare staged and experimental works in context. These are juxtaposed with other works that straddle the genres of photography and painting. As much as the medium of photography claims to reproduce reality, the range of possibilities it offers equally inspires artists to create works verging on the abstract or lyrical.

"From Becher to Blume" thus unfurls a broad and extremely varied spectrum of photographic approaches, which come together here in a refreshingly informal way to reveal their many contrasts and contradictions. On display are over 150 exhibits, including extensive serial works, by a total of 22 artists who have been instrumental in shaping recent German photography through their innovative contributions and continue to exert a major influence on the artistic medium.

A catalogue has been published by Snoeck Verlag to accompany the exhibition (Price: 36 €).

"Von Becher bis Blume"
Photographien aus der Sammlung Garnatz und der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur im Dialog

Ausstellung: 12. März bis 8. August 2021

Die Ausstellung kann nur mit vorheriger Registrierung besucht werden, um die Kontaktnachverfolgung zu gewährleisten. Online-Tickets hier

Im Fokus der Ausstellung stehen Photographien aus der Sammlung von Ute und Eberhard Garnatz im Dialog mit Werken aus der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur. Gezeigt werden rund 150 Exponate, teils umfangreiche serielle Arbeiten von 20 Künstlern, die das Bild der jüngeren deutschen Photographie wesentlich geformt und auch heute noch großen Einfluss auf das künstlerisch verwendbare Medium haben.

Fasziniert von der Kunstlandschaft des Rheinlands begann das Ehepaar Garnatz bereits in den 1970er-Jahren ihrer Sammeltätigkeit nachzugehen. Neben einer großen Kollektion von Gemälden, Skulpturen und Graphiken entwickelten sie eine eigenwillige und beachtlich facettenreiche Sammlung von Photographien, die teils bis in die 1950er-Jahre zurückreichen, vor allem aber photographische Arbeiten umfasst, die etwa seit den 1980ern bis in die 2000er-Jahre entstanden. Hinsichtlich ihrer Zusammenstellung harmoniert die Sammlung Garnatz in weiten Teilen mit dem hauseigenen Bestand der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur. Chargesheimer, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Bernd und Hilla Becher, Boris Becker, Anna und Bernhard Blume, Candida Höfer, Benjamin Katz, Jürgen Klauke, Tata Ronkholz, Sigmar Polke, Arnulf Rainer, Thomas Ruff, Wilhelm Schürmann, Thomas Struth u. a. sind zentrale Namen, die die Ausstellung in einen spannenden Dialog stellt. Künstlerische Konzepte, die einem eher sachlich dokumentarischen Ansatz folgen, treten solchen gegenüber, die subjektiv-experimentell an der Schnittstelle von Photographie und Malerei verortbar sind. So realitätsbezogen sich das Medium vorgibt, es begeistert durch die Bandbreite seiner Möglichkeiten, die graduell verschieden ins Abstrakte und Poetische reichen.

Die Ausstellung wird von einem umfangreichen Katalog begleitet.