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until 24.06. | #1929ARTatBerlin | Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung presents from 21st April 2018 the exhibition BRAND WAND by the artist Harf Zimmermann.
Harf Zimmermann, born in 1955 in Dresden and raised in Berlin, has still experienced the ruins and gaps in architecture of the post-war years in the cities that have been disfigured for a long time. In the monograph »BRAND WAND«, published by Steidl Verlag in 2014, the photographer also describes the firewalls in Berlin, this »sea of bricks«, as »testimonies to the catastrophe, the failure«. As his colleague Robert Polidori points out in his accompanying text to the book, “these images are indeed the visual background motif of Harf Zimmermann’s own life story […]. Harf has personally experienced the changes that Germany has undergone over the past sixty years. If you look at this uncomfortable development of history, it becomes clear that this is not a history of constant progress, but a development in breaks and discontinuity, pointed to by catastrophes. ”
Since his studies at the HGB Leipzig and his thesis with Arno Fischer »Hufelandstrasse, 1055 Berlin« (1987) Zimmermann photographs with large format cameras. For more than 20 years he has been traveling in places like Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden or Warsaw with his heavy equipment in search of the traces of his own history, which has inscribed himself in the walls: pre-war and post-war advertising, makeshift repairs, Graffiti of the 1990s, contemporary renovations, or all at once. Overgrown with grass and ivy, with wild trees in front of them, which at some point tower over the buildings, like a jungle recovering what it deserves. Ignored and unnoticed by most people, sometimes it even looks like abstract painting.
“Countless new layers have been laid down over the slowly growing traces of a hundred years, almost like in the last minutes of history. As if it could not be fast enough to pay off and repay. If we were not talking about cities, but about trees or arctic cores, one could read about the turbo-climate change of recent years on the uppermost rings. «(Harf Zimmermann)
Opening: Friday, 20th April 2018, 07:00 – 09:00 p.m., Opening speech: Dr. Christiane Stahl
Exhibition period: Saturday, 21st April to Sunday, 24th June 2018
Accompanying events: Thursday, 17th May 2018, 07.00 p.m.: Brita Reimers / Mara Sylvester / Jochen Winter: Presentation of the publication »Begegnungen. Von Natur und Natur«, Edition Matthes & Seitz.
June 2018: In the series, Literaturhaus der Fotografie “: following soon
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Image caption: Harf Zimmermann, Brandwand #9, 2011, © Harf Zimmermann
Exhibtion Harf Zimmermann – Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung Berlin | Contemporary Art – Kunst in Berlin – ART at Berlin
