Walter Niedermayr »Walter Niedermayr«

Galerie Nordenhake is pleased to present a solo exhibition of Italian artist Walter Niedermayr. Widely recognized for his large-scale, subdued photographs of alpine landscapes in which the theme is often man’s attempted conquest of nature, Niedermayr will exhibit works from the ongoing series Alpine Landscapes alongside photographs from his recent series Bildraum (Image-space). For this project he has been following the well-known Japanese architecture firm SANAA, founded in 1995 in Tokyo by the architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishiwaza, for the past six years. The resulting multi-part photographs are highly subjective interpretations of the architectural spaces with a special focus on atmosphere, reception as well as the surrounding area of the buildings. The same pale, penetrating light that spreads across a field of snow illuminates the photographs of interiors, corridors, and construction sights of the Bildraum series.

In all his work, Niedermayr maintains his focus on mankind’s perceptive relationship to his surroundings. For him, space can be experienced only through a combination of movement and sensory perception. He feels it is impossible to fully capture a space in one photograph. These works are defined by sequences or shifts in the images presented. His approach is clearly reflected in the “doubling” effects, in which one element appears simultaneously in multiple photographs, creating an alternating field of reference. Both the landscapes and the architectural works convey the idea of light, whiteness and transparency and a sense of the ephemeral (for which SANAA are also renowned), revealing the complex poetics of space, light and volume.