Thomas Weinberger

Of light and time

Not just in photography – but especially here – it is extremely difficult to find artists who deal with the conditions and possibilities of their medium very thoroughly and in a new way. However, that is precisely what Thomas Weinberger succeeds in doing in his photographic works. His large format photographs combine a very unique light situation and colour scheme, but these special properties are not the result of photographic filters or even the subsequent finishing on the computer, rather they are formed by the exact blending over each other of pixels in two shots of the same place by day and by night.

This results in a certain disorientation for the observer. Is it day or night? The paintings convey a surreal effect. They initially appear like photos of model landscapes – similar to the works of Thomas Demand, in which the presumably documentary photo seems to portray a realistic scenario, although it actually shows a paper model. In Weinberger’s case, the places are real, but they adopt the aura of a painting due to his special treatment. In his own words: “Where photography, in essence, seems to aim for "Truth" and "Reality", I wanted a concentration of time and light, that is fiction instead of fact. Thus, I direct the image of “reality“ ad absurdum, which is at least partly demanded by photography as distinct from painting, or, to put it more appropriately, it is something photography is accused of.“

One of the core aspects of photography – i.e. capturing a moment - is completely negated in Weinberger's work. By connecting two separate observation periods and thus two different complex areas of information on the motive, his photographs perhaps come closer to the essence of things and probably this is the biggest approximation to painting. A good painting is in a position to look behind the surface of things or people and to say more than the mere reproduction of surface is capable of doing.  

In his choice of motives, Weinberger concentrates on architectural situations, city views, building sites, scaffolding, living spaces in general, which human beings create themselves as distinct from rampant nature. In his catalogue text, Marc Gisbourne rightly refers to the fact that, in his work, Weinberger succeeds in conveying a convincing synthesis of subjective perception or consciousness of the observer and the extreme qualities of the object.

Exhibition opening:          Friday, 28.10.2011, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.