Group Exhibition
»Body Performance«
Vanessa Beecroft, Yang Fudong, Inez & Vinoodh, Jürgen Klauke, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, Barbara Probst, Viviane Sassen, Cindy Sherman, Bernd Uhlig, Erwin Wurm
Update #3, June 2020: As of Thursday, 25 June 2020, the Museum of Photography / Helmut Newton Foundation will be open again, from Thu – Sun 11 am – 8 pm! Visits to the museum require a time-slot ticket. It is recommended to purchase your ticket(s) online in advance: www.smb.museum/tickets
Update #2, May 2020: The exhibition is now available as a 360° virtual reality tour, featuring an audio commentary (in English) by curator Matthias Harder.
Look around with mouse or keys “A” and “D”. Works also great on mobile phone and VR-Glasses.
Update #1, March 2020: This venue is currently closed due to Covid-19. In the meantime, please enjoy exploring the works in digital form here on PiB. News by this venue are also available in PiB’s article #ClosedButOpen.
–
About the exhibition:
On 29 November 2019, the new exhibition “Body Performance” will open at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin with works by Vanessa Beecroft, Yang Fudong, Inez & Vinoodh, Jürgen Klauke, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, Barbara Probst, Viviane Sassen, Cindy Sherman, Bernd Uhlig, and Erwin Wurm.
Performance is an independent art form, and photography is its constant companion. For the first time in Germany, this group exhibition brings together photo sequences whose origins lie in performance art, dance, and other staged events, complemented by a selection of street photography and conceptual photography series. With their common focus on the human body, the images document or interpret performances, which in many cases have also been initiated by the photographers themselves. The close connection between photography and performance, happenings, and action art has existed for many decades and ranges from the Dadaists and Surrealists to Viennese Actionism and the contemporary nude human installations made in the public space by Spencer Tunick. The works of the 13 internationally renowned artists are presented throughout the spaces of the Helmut Newton Foundation as if on multiple stages, where visitors can view images of people who, in the act of performance, seem to slip into dream-like, parallel planes of reality.
A relatively unknown work by Helmut Newton is the series of images he made of the dancers of the Ballet de Monte Carlo starting in the 1980s. Instead of depicting them on the classical stage, he photographed them on the streets of Monaco, on the steps behind the famous casino, near the emergency exit of the theatre building, or in the nude at his own home. Newton reinterpreted with these dancers the compositional idea that came to define his work – Naked and Dressed – and once again addressed the link between exhibitionism and voyeurism.
We encounter a similar theme with Bernd Uhlig and his images of performances by choreographer Sasha Waltz, whom he has accompanied with his camera for many years: sometimes her dancers perform naked. In dance photography, the composition of the figure(s) in the space is a decisive formal aspect, even while the photographic documentation of the performance remains an interpretation. In the case of Bernd Uhlig and the dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests, a genuinely fleeting art form and its visual materialization find a congenial connection. With close-ups or gestures frozen in motion, or the whole stage choreography captured in a split second, Uhlig’s photographs, as in Waltz’s productions, alternate between architecture and the sensuality of the body playing the leading role.
Not unlike a dance theater production, Italian artist Vanessa Beecroft depicts nude or clothed women in elaborate tableaux vivants. The performances are often public and staged in galleries or museums, with women arranged sitting at long tables or in standing formations. During the hours-long actions they barely move, while Beecroft photographically documents their near-motionlessness; the performance and its image ultimately have equal standing in her œuvre. Beecroft’s legendary performance VB 55, presented at Berlin’s Nationalgalerie in 2005, involved several dozen women wearing transparent nylon pantyhose. Simultaneously nude and clothed, so to speak – which interestingly paraphrases the visual concept behind Helmut Newton’s Naked and Dressed series.
Jürgen Klauke, with his life-sized Viva España series (1976/1979), on the other hand, only has two people interact: a man and a woman engaged in a mysterious dance on a dark stage. We see only the performers’ bodies: the man stands while the woman whirls headfirst around him. Viewing the multi-part image sequence in succession gives the illusion of movement. Klauke allows the clothed or semi-clothed bodies of the man and woman to merge, which, similar to the numerous self-portraits he took of himself in drag around the same time, blurs the line between feminine and masculine.
We also encounter a sense of ambiguity in the work of Cindy Sherman, already in her early, small-format black-and-white series Untitled Film Stills from the late-1970s, in which she slips into ever-new roles like an actress. We find the young woman standing in the bathroom gazing into the mirror at her reflection, or perched on a low windowsill, looking out of an apartment window. In other images she appears outdoors in the city. Despite appearing to be unspectacular observations from everyday life, they are actually deliberately staged with the artist as the main character. Sherman continued the idea of role playing in her work, later disguising herself behind thick layers of make-up and wigs, masks, or breast prostheses in her colorful, untitled self-portraits from the year 2000. In her games of transformation, camouflage, and representation, Sherman also quotes the medium of film.
Erwin Wurm takes things to extremes through absurdity and humor when he asks people for a mini, one-minute performance in front of the camera. Players interact with objects to transform the street, interiors, or an Erwin Wurm exhibition into a stage for his One Minute Sculptures. Wurm thinks up the curious or absurd poses and situations that allow the visitors to become temporary works of art. Attempts to lie on narrow surfaces, to put one’s head in a box, or to balance two cups on one’s feet in the air while lying supine, are not always successful.
Viviane Sassen has been inspiring the fashion photo world for years with a highly distinctive approach. She also works primarily with the human body as her subject, sometimes capturing it in extreme contortions for a shot. She stages her models in unexpected ways, coloring their skin, obscured by shadow, mirrored, superimposed by objects, and often abstracted by cropping or framing the images, a method we know from Surrealism. She sometimes inverts the generally valid order of above and below, which results in a sense of disorientation for the viewer.
Barbara Probst, on the other hand, surprises with her own playfully experimental blend of classical street photography, portraiture, still life and, more recently, fashion. She arranges her photographs into diptychs, triptychs, and occasionally into wall-sized tableaux consisting of a dozen individual images in black-and-white and color. They always bear the same title, Exposures, and are distinguished with an image number, the location, and the exact date to the minute. Probst photographs the same situation with several cameras from different angles at the same time, triggered at exactly the same moment by radio waves.
Inez & Vinoodh – the photographer duo of Inez von Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin – have been irritating the world of fashion since the 1990s with their surreal images. Their techniques include digital image manipulation to fuse the bodies of real people with dolls, or men with women. Inez & Vinoodh not only push the boundaries of common modes of representation in editorial and advertising photography, but also the limits of reality. For example, when they digitally remove select individuals from an image, leaving behind a conspicuously empty spot, or when they radically change the sexes and skin colors of their protagonists.
Yang Fudong’s black-and-white photography is inspired by French film noir and even earlier films from Shanghai, made during a time when the Chinese port city was still very much inspired by the West. With his melancholic nudes he seems to conjure up a timeless past; in his films, as well, we encounter comparably reduced and enigmatic narratives. To show nudity so openly is still considered provocative in large parts of Chinese society. In his series New Women, one or more nude women sit or stand in a sparsely but luxuriously equipped studio set. The photographs seem like stills of the video film that he produced at the same time.
Robert Longo shot his photo sequence Men in the Cities in the late-1970s on the roof of his loft near Manhattan Bridge in New York City. We see people caught by the camera in unnatural poses. They appear to be dancing wildly, or replaying scenes from American western, war, or gangster films, for example when someone seems to fall in a hail of imaginary bullets. In fact, it was such a film still from Fassbinder’s The American Soldier (1970) that inspired Longo to create this series of performative images. His models dodged swinging or thrown objects while Longo photographed their reaction.
Robert Mapplethorpe, on the other hand, choreographed only one person, in the chosen image, taken in 1980: the former bodybuilding world champion Lisa Lyon, who referred to herself as a sculptor of her own body. Mapplethorpe’s staging of her nude body stretched out on a boulder in California’s Joshua Tree National Park prompts us to consider stereotypes of femininity. Newton photographed Lyon in Paris around the same time and was equally fascinated by her muscular physique. The exhibition Body Performance thus closes the circle with this woman who is strong in the truest sense of the word.
Within the upcoming show at the Helmut Newton Foundation, viewers encounter a broad swathe of artistic actions and performances focusing on the human body: people dress up for unconventionally staged fashion shots, they move wildly on streets and rooftops, inhabit rocks and museum spaces, and appear as dancers on and off-stage. Role play and exceeding physical limitations are revealed by contemporary photographic perspectives on the most diverse visual aspects of body and space, dance, and movement. In both their presentation and their reception, these images provokes questions on self-perception, the gaze of the other, identity, and emotion.
Framework program
Sundays, 4 – 5 pm
Guided Tours
Held in German.
No booking/prior registration required.
4 € plus admission.
Thursday, March 12, 2020, 1 pm
Foto Lunch Lecture for blind and sighted visitors
Curatorial comment by
Matthias Harder (Helmut Newton Foundation).
Audiodescription by Martina Wiemers (DHG).
Held in German. Admission free.
Deutsche Hörfilm gemeinnützige GmbH (DHG) in collaboraton with the Helmut Newton Foundation.
–
The current exhibition Helmut Newton. SUMO / Mark Arbeit. George Holz. Just Loomis. THREE BOYS FROM PASADENA / Photo Collection of Helmut and June can be seen until 10 November 2019.
Editor’s note: the exhibition is featured on the cover of the PiB Guide Nº27 NOV/DEC 2019 – PiB’s bi-monthly print issue / Berlin art guide.
Nov 30, 2019 — May 10, 2020 extended until Sep 20, 2020
Opening Reception: Friday, Nov 29, 8 pm
Jebensstraße 2, 10623 Berlin
[Charlottenburg | Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf]
Special (temporary) opening hours: Thu – Sun 11 am – 8 pm
Opening hours: Tue – Sun 11 am – 7 pm, Thu 11 am – 8 pm
Admission: 10 € / reduced 5 €
Visits to the museum currently require a time-slot ticket!
Photography exhibitions/events in…
PiB Guide Nº58 JAN/FEB 2025 © PiB (Photography in Berlin). © PiB (Photography in Berlin). COVER PHOTO: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Adebiyi, 1989 © Rotimi Fani-Kayode. Courtesy of Autograph, London. Group show »A World in Common. Contemporary African Photography« at C/O Berlin in Berlin-Charlottenburg, read more on page 4 & 5! +++ 3 photos on right double page spread (p. 5), top to bottom right: 1) Dawit L. Petros, Untitled (Prologue III), Nouakchott, Mauritania, 2016 © Dawit L. Petros. Courtesy of the artist and Tiwani Contemporary. 2) Lebohang Kganye, Re shapa setepe salenyalo II, 2013 © Lebohang Kganye. Courtesy of the artist. 3) Rotimi Fani-Kayode, see cover credits. +++ PiB Guide Editors / V.i.S.d.P. / Art Direction: Julia Schiller & Oliver Schneider
Current print issue
PiB Guide Nº58
JAN/FEB 2025
#pibguide
Discover great photography exhibitions in Berlin & beyond in PiB’s bi-monthly print issue, the PiB Guide! The PiB Guide Nº58 JAN/FEB 2025 has been published as a booklet, A6 format · 36 pages · English & German · worldwide shipping.
Aktuelle Printausgabe
PiB Guide Nº58
JAN/FEB 2025
#pibguide
Entdecke großartige Fotoausstellungen in Berlin & darüberhinaus in PiBs zweimonatlicher Printausgabe, dem PiB Guide! Der PiB Guide Nº58 JAN/FEB 2025 ist erschienen als Booklet im DIN A6 Format · 36 Seiten · Deutsch & Englisch · weltweiter Versand.