"Michael SCHÄFER's work analyses news and entertainment images from classical print media as well as amateur videos from YouTube.
The artist's gaze is drawn to the over-determination of media images, their surplus of importance and meaning, which formally present a historical-political constellation to the viewer as if it were a finished interpretation.
Michael SCHÄFER removes the faces of the protagonists in these found images and replaces them with his own photos of actors. Pressure points or pixels meet the artist's hyper-sharp image fragments.
This way of dealing with photography is a form of artistic mimicry, a kind of assimilation of images in order to then deconstruct them." (publisher's note, © Koenig, 2016)
"The exhibition series 'with / against the flow. Contemporary photographic interventions.' shows contemporary artistic photography from Germany, juxtaposed with contributions from two artists in each exhibition, each double exhibition heading for a multi-year world tour.
Previously involved artists
Inside: Viktoria Binschtok (vol. 1, 2016), Michael Schäfer (vol.2, 2016), Sebastian Stumpf (vol.3, 2019), Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs (vol.4, 2019)
On the design of the catalogs: the catalogs appear as a publication series and are designed in a light, experimental and open-looking form. The editions of the series are structured by means of a color concept and the artistic works are presented compactly in image series (with the participation of the participating photographers).
In the image sections, among other things, greatly enlarged details and 1: 1 cutouts are integrated, which look like close-ups and allow an additional unusual view of the work; an black-and-white text section on thin natural paper follows. This text contains an interview, installation views and a studio shot, which is realized by the artists themselves.
The flexible carton for the dust jacket and the binding as a folder brochure give the catalog a booklet character. On the dust jacket a selected piece of work will be reproduced in poster size." (free translated and slightly modified text, © Nicola REITER)
The artist's gaze is drawn to the over-determination of media images, their surplus of importance and meaning, which formally present a historical-political constellation to the viewer as if it were a finished interpretation.
Michael SCHÄFER removes the faces of the protagonists in these found images and replaces them with his own photos of actors. Pressure points or pixels meet the artist's hyper-sharp image fragments.
This way of dealing with photography is a form of artistic mimicry, a kind of assimilation of images in order to then deconstruct them." (publisher's note, © Koenig, 2016)
"The exhibition series 'with / against the flow. Contemporary photographic interventions.' shows contemporary artistic photography from Germany, juxtaposed with contributions from two artists in each exhibition, each double exhibition heading for a multi-year world tour.
Previously involved artists
Inside: Viktoria Binschtok (vol. 1, 2016), Michael Schäfer (vol.2, 2016), Sebastian Stumpf (vol.3, 2019), Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs (vol.4, 2019)
On the design of the catalogs: the catalogs appear as a publication series and are designed in a light, experimental and open-looking form. The editions of the series are structured by means of a color concept and the artistic works are presented compactly in image series (with the participation of the participating photographers).
In the image sections, among other things, greatly enlarged details and 1: 1 cutouts are integrated, which look like close-ups and allow an additional unusual view of the work; an black-and-white text section on thin natural paper follows. This text contains an interview, installation views and a studio shot, which is realized by the artists themselves.
The flexible carton for the dust jacket and the binding as a folder brochure give the catalog a booklet character. On the dust jacket a selected piece of work will be reproduced in poster size." (free translated and slightly modified text, © Nicola REITER)
- Ed(s)/Author(s)
- Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Christin Müller, Florian Ebner
- Book design
- Nicola REITER
- Format
- Pb. with poster as dust jacket, 21,5 x 28 x 1 cm., 68 pp., with 14 color & 23 b/w ills., bilingual texts: German / English