Sample Gallery/Dealer Art Work - Andreas Wendt Gallery
NONSUCH #7
| Artist: |
Steffi Klenz |
| Image Medium: |
c-type print, Edition: 5 |
| Image Dimensions: |
95,5 x 75 cm |
| Art work Description: |
| Nonsuch
“Nonsuch” concentrates on the ‘model’town Poundbury and represents an interesting development of Steffi Klenz’s exploration of space and artificiality presented in the series “A Scape”. Tying “Nonsuch” in with the language of landscape and cityscape photography, she intends to associate her new series to sensibilities such as issues of space, control and ownership.
Poundbury in Dorset functions as the expansion of the county town of Dorchester. Built on land owned by the Duchy of Cornwell and planned by the architect Leon Krier, the town owns its conceptual structure to the principles set out in Prince Charles book “A Vision of Britain” (1989).
The seemingly unexceptional space photographed means that at first the images could be taken to be documentary photographs of an ordinary town.
Pounbury is depicted while it is empty and presents a photographic series that is not reliant on human presence but that finds its drama and allegory in the physical and architectural presence of the town. Interestingly, Klenz deliberately does not represent Poundbury as the exemplary urban addition but rather creates visually a village represented as a folly that seems to make the habitation and public life awkward.
The photographic series presents an uncanny feel of estrangement in its depiction of an abandoned town, devoid of people, litter and personal details – like a perfect backdrop for stage sets before or after a performance.
This gives the photographs a poignant reading, one in which the architectural space of Poundbury contains a trace of an act that will generate stories. The images are asking the viewer to engage with the plausibility of the town of Poundbury as a ‘visual text’ that seems to construct a certain way of inhabitation.
The viewer is asked both to decipher the significance of the place in its bland depiction and to unravel the human acts that might have taken place there.
A town that one generally considers through its cultural heritage to be defined by the inhabitants taste and activities, is shown in the photographic series as being prescribed. The town of Poundbury is reduced to neutral constructions – a building code of zero cultural or social weight. Cleanliness and order reign.
A space presented in which the master plan of utopia omits individuality and ‘grand scale’ and the thought of what might be behind the depicted scenery creates a compelling hovering between what Poundbury actually might be in its unsettling atmosphere.
Focused on the edge of urbanism the photographic images of Poundbury do not define the village as the ideal utopian place but rather as a ‘displaced space’.
The series “Nonsuch” intends to explore issues including cultural identity, boundaries and borders, but perhaps most fundamentally it intends to raise questions about photography offering the viewer the space to explore concerns about one’s one place in the world.
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8 art work(s) found for Andreas Wendt Gallery
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