OPEN SPACE 9: OLIVER KERN | Die deutsche Aussicht
Opening: Friday, 7 October 2011, 7 p.m.
Exhibition: 8 October - 5 November 2011
Oliver Kern travels through Germany to sites we associate with German identity. But rarely we will find these sites on his pictures, which are mostly taken on his way during cursory encounters on car parks, at events, on motorways. He meets people within the structures they live in, and instead of big landmarks he finds small symbols to reflect the mood in Germany: Since big symbols have ceased long ago to be of significance in our everyday life. In between there are landscapes, just seemingly invariable, permanently reconstructed, but still building the horizon.
Oliver Kern
1965 born in Saarbrücken, studied photography with Arno Fischer at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Dortmund. He lives in Berlin as freelance photographer and works on long term projects that are published in exhibitions and books:
Die Zone (1995), shown lastly 2010 in the gallery Schule des Sehens in Zingst. Die vorläufige Stadt (1998-2003), a portrait of Berlin with narrations by Michaela Heissenberger.
Der gläserne Schlüssel. Die Berlinale und die Inszenierung von Glamour, 2007 shown for the first time in the Museum für Kommunikation Berlin and published 2008 by Otto Müller Verlag, Salzburg.
2006 invitation by the Austrian Kulturverein X-CHANGE for the project caravan into Iran; 2011 for City Cultures in Focus to Bucharest.
Die deutsche Aussicht received the Lotto Brandenburg Kunstpreis for photography in 2006, and a grant of Saarland in Schloss Wiepersdorf in 2008 and will be published as a book in 2012.
1965 born in Saarbrücken, studied photography with Arno Fischer at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Dortmund. He lives in Berlin as freelance photographer and works on long term projects that are published in exhibitions and books:
Die Zone (1995), shown lastly 2010 in the gallery Schule des Sehens in Zingst. Die vorläufige Stadt (1998-2003), a portrait of Berlin with narrations by Michaela Heissenberger.
Der gläserne Schlüssel. Die Berlinale und die Inszenierung von Glamour, 2007 shown for the first time in the Museum für Kommunikation Berlin and published 2008 by Otto Müller Verlag, Salzburg.
2006 invitation by the Austrian Kulturverein X-CHANGE for the project caravan into Iran; 2011 for City Cultures in Focus to Bucharest.
Die deutsche Aussicht received the Lotto Brandenburg Kunstpreis for photography in 2006, and a grant of Saarland in Schloss Wiepersdorf in 2008 and will be published as a book in 2012.