Timm Rautert »die welt | und | die spiegel«

Opening: September 5, 6 – 8 PM
Artist talk and book presentation of Weltraum: September 20, 4 PM
Timm Rautert in conversation with Dr. Bertram Kaschek (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart)

For five decades, Timm Rautert has shaped how we perceive photography, exploring its possibilities and limits. His series Bildanalytische Photographie (“Image-Analytical Photography”), begun in 1968, is considered groundbreaking for its radical exploration of the medium’s fundamental grammar. Early on, Rautert moved away from the notion of photography as solely mimetic, revealing the medium’s inherent ability to construct reality. His first solo exhibition at Galerie Nordenhake – and his first in Berlin – presents the important German photographer in a more comprehensive manner, featuring two current series, an installation, and several key works from the 1970s.

In Weltraum (“Space”, 2014/2015) the depicted architecture emerges as the main protagonist. Rautert’s photographs allow us to wander through a building devoid of people, past conference halls and meeting rooms that range from opulent to austere, as well as monumental staircases. At the same time, we encounter a site of changing significance: the current headquarters of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome was originally designed as the Italian colonial administration building. Construction stopped when Italy entered World War II and only resumed in the 1950s, now as the FAO headquarters.

With Weltraum, the artist explores not only the complex history of this historically charged building but also the strategies of self-representation embedded in its architecture. Constructed in a fascist style, the various rooms were decorated individually by the member states of the UN’s oldest and largest organization. By documenting these national stagings, Rautert also makes a fundamental statement about the nature of photography: as in his Image-Analytical Photography series, he demonstrates how reality is shaped and conveyed through photographic means. In doing so, he engages with the reflection on the construction of nations, history, and identity as a theme inherent to the medium itself.