Journeyman's Piece
Gesellen-stück
Installation, performance and digital painting
The photographic investigation ‚Journeyman’s Piece‘ draws inspiration from Martin Kippenberger’s exhibition „Peter – Die russische Stellung“ at Galerie Max Hetzler, where Kippenberger attempted to address all the problems and requirements of sculpture.
I incorporated this idea into my own photography, covering themes such as indexicality, perspectivity, and painting, which are not necessarily present in individual works but inform each other throughout my work.
In this work, the same carpet appears three times: in an image from 1982 found in my family archive, in a long-term exposure taken before the exhibition’s opening during a performance in which I seek the perfect drape of the carpet, and in its physical form as a remnant of the performance that left it there.
These elements frame the core of the work which involves treating analogue material like digital paintings, for example by painting clouds on my computer.
The work received the photo advancement award by Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and HfG.
Installation view, 12m, ‚Reality Check‘, Isenburger Schloss, Offenbach am Main (DE), 2015
Extent: 11 lambda exposures of varying size on 300g Hahnemühle Photorag Ultrasmooth, 1 x 9 x 13 cm Kodak print, carpet, performance, postcard stand
Dissidenz, performance documentation, ‚The Biography of Things‘, Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Frankfurt am Main (DE), 2018
[…]
In his work, Weissbeck adapts Martin Kippenberger’s approach of examining and addressing the problems and requirements of a medium to his own interests. The work consists of documenting the so-called perfect drape of an old carpet, the performance that created it, the use of a postcard stand with postcards (a rhetorical turn in the sense of Gertrude Stein), and multiple images that explore the painterly possibilities of contemporary digital photo editing.
By addressing the fragility and the potential for failing one’s own expectations, the work oscillates between playful humor and associative poetics, successfully achieving artistic autonomy. This is demonstrated in the brim of a hat that is extended into a digitally enhanced, flamingo-colored neon bow under a cloud-covered ceiling.
· Andreas Schlaegel
Installation view, ‚Reality Check‘, Isenburger Schloss, Offenbach am Main (DE), 2015
Installation view, ‚Reality Check‘, Isenburger Schloss, Offenbach am Main (DE), 2015
What you see… the sun, a gleaming fireball, dazzling the eye of the camera with its light. The black frame surrounding a cloudy section of sky reveals the photograph to be an analogue slide. The frayed edges and corners serve as evidence of the manual production technique to create it. Inside the frame, the sky borders the pictorial object, contextualizing it in its natural environment. Light reflexes and shadowing refer to a past materiality and spatiality and authenticate the situation depicted. A black dot on the camera sensor, an almost unnoticeable element in the composition, testifies to the presence of a photographic apparatus. The photograph captures the perfect moment of reality in a scenic way.
…is not what you get. The camera flash is reflected as a gleaming ball of fire as technology records itself. The painterly structure of digital white noise surrounds an image unsuccessfully attempting to disguise itself as an analogue recording. The geometric precision of the frame provides the clue to its being digitally constructed. Within the composition, digitality also continues to challenge the credibility of past analogy, calling the depicting function of photography into question. Light reflexes and shadows become liberated, turn into a gesture of artistic composition and function as evidence of virtual spatiality. A single, arbitrarily placed dot then appears as a starting point for individual freedom. The photograph creates the perfect moment through painterly means.
The work, in which Rudi Weissbeck engages with the character of our current reality and highlights the possibility of its being constructed by merging subject matter and production method, is titled Gesellenstück (Journeyman’s Piece). It does not simply depict the three-dimensional nature of our physical environment, but extends the latter by the dimension of the digital, so to speak. Both find their equivalence in the photographic work and achieve authenticity. This turns them into hybrid visual objects or images of things as they contribute to the expansion of our reality – our world of things.
· Hendrike Nagel
On July 10, Deutsche Börse presented the Deutsche Börse and HfG Photo Advancement Award. […] The jury for this year’s award included photographer Barbara Klemm, HfG President Bernd Kracke and Anne-Marie Beckmann, curator of the Art Collection Deutsche Börse.
[…]
Rudi Weissbeck’s ‚Gesellenstück‘ is a successful and thought-provoking examination of the representation and creation of reality. Through his carefully composed arrangement of various subjects in space, Weissbeck demonstrates the diverse technical and visual possibilities of the medium of photography.
· aus dem Statement der Jury
Installation view, 5m, ‚The Biography of Things‘, Art Collection
Deutsche Börse, Frankfurt am Main (DE), 2018, © Albrecht Haag