News

Dear friends of the gallery, we are delighted to invite you to the opening of ‚Constant Bloom‘ by Lucas Foglia during Berlin Art Week on Thursday, September 11, at 6 pm. We look forward to seeing you there!

‘Constant Bloom’, photographer Lucas Foglia’s latest body of work, traces the world’s longest butterfly migration. Each year, Painted Lady butterflies travel between Africa, the Middle East, and Europe in search of blooming flowers. They have followed this route for millions of years.

Today, with climate change altering when and where wildflowers bloom, Painted Ladies rely on flowers in our parks, farms, and gardens. As Foglia followed the butterflies from Kenya to Norway, he also met people experiencing unseasonal droughts, floods, or freezes. Many were refugees travelling to Europe along the same route as the Painted Ladies. In ‘Constant Bloom’, the longest butterfly migration becomes a metaphor for human connections across international borders.

Opening Reception on Thursday, September 11, 6-9 pm
Exhibition from September 12 to October 25, 2025

For more info and more images, please follow the link.

We’re pleased to announce the publication of Heustock / Hayloft, the new photographic series by gallery artist Bernhard Fuchs. Taken between 2018 and 2024 in his native region of Upper Austria, the images explore the quiet, hidden interiors of haylofts on small-scale farms.

These spaces, located directly above the stables, serve both a practical and atmospheric function. After one or two harvests during the warmer months, the grass is dried in the fields, gathered into haystacks, and then stored in the lofts before being fed daily to the animals below through hatches in the stable ceiling.

Fuchs describes the haylofts as ‘reminiscent of sacred spaces,’ shaped by their limited light, stillness, and timeless atmosphere.

Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, the book is available in a German edition (Heustock) and an English edition (Hayloft). We look forward to presenting a selection of prints from the series at our booth at Paris Photo this November.

We are delighted to invite you to an artist talk with Jessica Backhaus on Thursday, June 26, at 6:30 pm. On the occasion of her current solo exhibition, she will speak with Julia Rosenbaum about the development of the project, her fascination with paper as a material, and share her thoughts on abstraction in photography as well as her minimalist, poetic experiments with colour and light. The talk will be held in German and will last approximately one hour. No registration is required.

Dear friends of the gallery, please join us on Thursday, May 22, at 6 pm for the opening of Jessica Backhaus‘s exhibition of ‘Plein Soleil’. We look forward to seeing you!

Colour and form, light and shadow – the abstract compositions of the series ‘Plein Soleil’ by Jessica Backhaus reduce the images to the four basic elements of photography. As in her previous project ‘Cut Outs’, the artist arranges coloured paper of different textures and grammages in intense, summery sunlight. Individual sheets are folded or curved, creating hard shadows and vibrant colour fields that the camera combines into poetic arrangements. In her work, Backhaus explores the photographic possibilities of abstraction, blurring the lines between documentary photography and intuitive, lyrical colour figuration.

Jessica Backhaus (*1970, Cuxhaven, Germany) is regarded as one of the most important voices in contemporary photography. Her work has been exhibited internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Kunsthalle, Erfurt, Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin, Centre de la Photographie Genève, and the Centre de la Photographie in Mougins. The publication of ‘Cut Outs’ (2021) was nominated for both the Arles Book Award and the Aperture/Paris Photo Book Award. The book for the new series ‘Plein Soleil’ is published by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, in spring 2024. Jessica Backhaus lives and works in Berlin.

Opening Reception on Thursday, May 22, 6-9 pm
Exhibition from May 23 to July 19, 2025

We are thrilled to return to ART DÜSSELDORF, which takes place from April 11 to 13 at Areal Böhler. We will present a solo booth for Swiss artist duo Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer and very much look forward to seeing you there! Please find us in booth A 04!

@artduesseldorf
@arealboehler
@lenaamuatzoemeyer

Dear friends of the gallery, please join us on Friday, March 27, at 6 pm for the opening of Christian Patterson‘s exhibition of ‘Gong Co.’. We will have copies of the book available, and the artist will be present to sign them. We look forward to seeing you.

‘Gong Co.’ is a long-form, monumental memento mori to the decline, death, and decay of a small grocery store in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, made over 20 years between 2003 and 2023. When US artist Christian Patterson first discovered the store, it was still open for business, its shelves scattered with decades-old, expired products; an odd, unintentional time capsule seemingly fulfilling Andy Warhol’s prophecy that ‘Someday, all department stores will become museums and all museums will become department stores.’

Over the course of many years, Patterson revisited and documented the store, first as it was going out of business and then after it was closed with the products on its shelves left to rot. The result is a multi-layered work that tells of the passing of time and the transience of meaning. In the store, we see the remains of what was bought and what was left behind, an uncanny reflection on 20th-century America and a passing way of life. And in ‘going out of business’, Patterson finds something surprisingly personal – an existential allegory that is undeniably universal.

Christian Patterson (*1972, Fond du Lac, USA) lives and works in New York City. His working method is a highly conceptual, narrative-driven approach, often involving intense research, archival digging and extended, concentrated time working in the field and his New York studio. Photographs remain at the heart of Patterson’s work but are often accompanied by other mediums – anything from drawings and paintings to readymade objects. Patterson’s work is exhibited internationally. ‘Gong Co.’ won the Grand Prix des Images in Vevey, and Images Vevey Editions and TBW Books published a book on the series in 2024.

Opening Reception on Friday, March 28, 6-9 pm
Exhibition from March 29 to May 17, 2025

We will start the new season at the gallery with the opening of Mårten Lange‘s ‘The Palace’ on Friday, January 10 at 6 pm and very much look forward to seeing you there!

‘The Palace’ by Swedish artist and photographer Mårten Lange is a body of work that explores the role of architecture as a repository for history, memories and emotions. Over the course of three years, Lange has photographed at historical and archaeological sites around Europe, mostly in Italy, Greece and France. He focused on the basic elements of architecture, such as doors, windows and stairs. These architectural archetypes do not tell a clear story about any certain place. Instead, inspired by the ancient concept of the memory palace – a mnemonic technique where spaces are used to structure thought – they allow the viewer to construct their own labyrinth, a suggestive visual world of secret passages and hiding places. Underlining the psychological charges that architecture can contain, the work is a meditation on the enduring presence of the past.

The artistic work of Mårten Lange (*1984, Gothenburg, Sweden) often revolves around nature, technology, architecture and the urban environment. Using a photographic language of reduction and concentration, Lange creates images that are clear, poetic and direct. He currently lives and works in Malmö, Sweden. His work has been published and exhibited internationally, e.g., at The Rencontres Arles, Moderna Museet, Stockholm or Hamburger Kunsthalle. ‘The Palace’ has been awarded a Hasselblad Foundation grant.

The show is our contribution to the extensive program of exhibitions, talks and events during EMOP, the European Month of Photography in Berlin in March!

Opening Reception on Friday, January 10, 6-9 pm
Exhibition from January 11 to March 22, 2025

We are very happy to be participating in the upcoming Paris Photo 2024, held from November 7 to 10, with an Opening Day on Wednesday, November 6. The 27th edition of the fair marks its return to the Grand Palais. You will now find us in booth C47, where we will be presenting new works by Christian Patterson, Andrea Grützner, Mårten Lange, Jessica Backhaus and Lia Darjes. We are very much looking forward to seeing you!

Dear friends of the gallery, please join us for the opening of Lydia Goldblatt‘s exhibition of Fugue, curated by Chris Littlewood, on Friday, October 25, at 6pm. We very much look forward to seeing you.

Fugue by Lydia Goldblatt is, in her own words, ‘a body of work about love and grief, mothering and losing a mother, intimacy and distance’ told through photographs – portraits, still lifes and abstractions – centring on the domestic space and made over the course of four years.

‘I wanted to be honest about what I was struggling with, about the feelings of claustrophobia and rage, as much as intimacy and love. These are feelings so often hidden by mothers, so often silenced as unacceptable.’ (Lydia Goldblatt)

Lydia Goldblatt (*1978, GB) holds a Master’s from the London College of Communication. Her series Still Here was published in 2013 as an artist monograph by Hatje Cantz. Her second book Fugue was published in spring 2024 by GOST Books. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Felix Nussbaum Museum, Osnabrück; Somerset House, London; the GoEun Museum of Photography, South Korea; and the National Museum, Gdansk. She was awarded the Grand Prix at 2014’s Tokyo International Photography Festival and, in 2020, the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize for her portrait Eden from the series Fugue. She lives and works in London.

Chris Littlewood (*1981, HK) is an artist and curator working with photography, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

READING UP: 1000 Words Magazine conducted and published an interview with Lydia Goldblatt in May on the occasion of the publication of Fugue – please find it here.

ROBERT MORAT GALERIE is happy to be confirmed for our 16th participation in PARIS PHOTO and the return to the Grand Palais in November!

We are very much looking forward to presenting new works by Christian Patterson, Jessica Backhaus, Mårten Lange, Andrea Grützner, and Lia Darjes!

@christian.patterson @jessica_backhaus @andreagruetzner @mrtenlange @lia_darjes @parisphotofair

Please join us for the opening of the exhibition LOOKING AT WHAT CAN’T BE SEEN by British artist and photographer Simon Roberts on Friday, June 7, from 6 to 9 pm. The artist will be present. We look forward to seeing you!

The exhibition brings together works from the two series “The Celestials” and “Cloud Negatives”.

During the global pandemic and ensuing lockdowns, satellite images released by NASA and the European Space Agency showed a dramatic drop in nitrogen dioxide emissions; the skies were clearer and bluer, and the earth was breathing again. The cyanotypes in the series “The Celestials” were created during that time, using negatives of pictures taken from plane windows during work expeditions over the preceding years. The Prussian blue of the cyanotypes, a colour that is not found in nature, is brought about by a chemical reaction that produces ferric ferrocyanide. They evoke an otherworldly, dreamlike intensity that is augmented in several cases by layering multiple negatives – creating “fictional” images and allowing us to “look at what can’t be seen.” The same is true for the large-format black and white prints in the “Cloud Negatives” series, which were made using the same negatives. Both series work with a degree of abstraction that speaks of the essence of what many people experience in our time of climate emergency: our altered states and perspectives, collective uncertainty and deepening awareness of the interconnectedness between us and the natural world.

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It is with a heavy heart that we must share the news of the passing of Bertien van Manen (1935-2024). The Bertien van Manen Foundation and her family have issued an „In Memoriam“ (please follow the link provided below).

Bertien joined the gallery 16 years ago in what must have been a big leap of faith. The gallery was young, she was a highly respected, influential artist, a star already back then. She became a companion, a mentor and most importantly, a very good friend. We will miss her dearly.

SOLID SLIP by Hannah Hughes will be on view during the fast-approaching GALLERY WEEKEND BERLIN, April 26 – 28! We will work special opening hours and very much look forward to seeing you:

Friday, April 26, 12 – 9 pm
Saturday, April 27, 12 – 7 pm
Sunday, April 28, 12 – 6 pm

Hannah Hughes is a visual artist working in photography, collage, and sculpture. Her work explores the relationship between image, object and language, focusing on the potential of negative space and the salvaging and re-use of discarded materials. Hughes’s practice involves strategies of fragmentation and reconstruction. Her two-dimensional collages are often described as either flat sculptures or sculptural photographs.

Hannah Hughes (*1975, UK) graduated from the University of Brighton in 1997 and has since exhibited in the UK and internationally. She lives and works in London.

@_h_annah_hughes @galleryweekendberlin

ROBERT MORAT GALERIE is very much looking forward to participating in ART DÜSSELDORF. The fair takes place from April 12 to 14 at Areal Böhler. We will present new works by Jessica Backhaus, Andrea Grützner, Hannah Hughes and Peter Puklus. Please feel warmly invited to come by our booth A06!


@artduesseldorf 
@arealboehler 

@jessica_backhaus 
@andreagruetzner 
@_h_annah_hughes 
@peterpuklus

„MAKING LIGHT OF EVERYTHING“ is a group show at the Centre de la Photographie in Geneva, on view until April 28, curated by Claus Gunti and Danaé Panchaud. ROBERT MORAT GALERIE is very pleased about gallery artist Jessica Backhaus contributing two large pieces from her new series „Plein Soleil“! Other artists included in the exhibition are Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah, Emma Bedos, Mathieu Bernard-Reymond, Sara de Brito Faustino, Charlie Engman, Alina Frieske, Peter Hauser, Moritz Jekat, Leigh Merrill, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs and Martin Widmer.

„Through elaborate processes of image manipulation, the artists in this exhibition make visible, capture or fix a form of intimacy, from the most personal expression of an emotion to the automated interpretation of human relationships by a machine. Whether made with coloured paper, generated by artificial intelligence, created entirely in the photographic laboratory or the result of meticulous photomontage, the images brought together for this exhibition reflect their author’s tenacious experimentation, conveying emotions that are sometimes frivolous, sometimes profound.“ (from the Press Release)

@centre_photographie_geneve @danaepanchaud @clausgunti @jessica_backhaus

Photo: © Annik Wetter

ROBERT MORAT GALERIE is very happy about the exhibition „Nous irons jusqu’au Soleil“ by gallery artist Jessica Backhaus at the Centre de la Photographie in Mougins! 

Curated by François Cheval and Yasmine Chemali, the show runs until June 2 and assembles work from Jessica’s highly acclaimed series „Cut Outs“ as well as new work from a new project titled „The Nature of Things“. Should you pass through the South of France, or be lucky enough to live in the area, do not miss the opportunity to visit the show!

@jessica_backhaus 
@centrephotographiemougins

Dear friends of the gallery,

Celebrating its 20. anniversary, Robert Morat Galerie is very happy to invite you to the opening of the first German solo exhibition for British artist Hannah Hughes.

Hannah Hughes is a visual artist working in photography, collage, and sculpture. Her work explores the relationship between image, object and language, focusing on the potential of negative space and the salvaging and re-use of discarded materials. Hughes’s practice involves strategies of fragmentation and reconstruction. Her two-dimensional collages are often described as either flat sculptures or sculptural photographs.

Hannah Hughes uses materials that invite the memory of the everyday touch, such as paper stocks used in glossy magazines, pulp packaging, and clay. This focus on tactility positions the work in relation to the body’s boundaries and the spaces created where bodies intersect with their surroundings. She examines edges within the photographic image – for example, in her series of two-part C-Type collages, one form intersects the surface of another, creating a visible border within the photograph, which can be viewed fully from the side.

Hannah Hughes (*1975, UK) graduated from the University of Brighton in 1997 and has since exhibited in the UK and internationally. She lives and works in London.

Opening Reception on Friday, March 22, 6-9 pm
Exhibition from March 23 to June 1, 2024

Dear friends of the gallery,

To kick off the new year, we cordially invite you to join us for the opening of the exhibition „MÜHL“ by Bernhard Fuchs on Friday, January 12, at 6 pm!

Bernhard Fuchs’ new series of landscape and nature studies is titled “MÜHL”. The artist, who lives and works in Düsseldorf, regularly returns to his native region in Upper Austria and takes long walks there, in the Mühlviertel. He captures details of nature: stones, water, trees, sky and attempts to appropriate them visually. He creates simple, calm photographs that, in their visual density, capture what is most difficult to capture: an atmosphere, a feeling of belonging and a connection to a place and the elements. At the same time, the series is a reflection on perception itself – on how things that were thought to be familiar can appear strange and unfathomable when viewed in great detail.

Bernhard Fuchs, born in 1971 in Haslach, Austria, studied with Bernd Becher at the Academy in Düsseldorf and with Timm Rautert at the Academy in Leipzig. Critically acclaimed previous series and publications include “AUTOS” (Koenig Books, 2008), “ROADS AND PATHS” (Koenig Books, 2010) and “WOODLANDS” (Koenig Books, 2014). Important museums such as the Sprengel Museum in Hanover and the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in Bottrop have already dedicated large solo exhibitions to his work. The monograph for the current exhibition was published in 2021 by Koenig Books, London.

Opening Reception on Friday, January 12, 6–9 pm
Exhibition from January 13 to March 16, 2024

The gallery is very much looking forward to participating in this year‘s edition of AMT SALON, the Berlin gallery pop-up held Dec 1-3 at the beautiful former district court building on Kantstrasse 79.

With gallery artist Jessica Backhaus’ large-scale institutional exhibition ongoing at Haus am Kleistpark, we will take the opportunity to present her brand new, previously unseen body of work titled „Plein Soleil“!

For more info on the event, please follow the link!

@jessica_backhaus @amtsalon

ROBERT MORAT GALERIE is very happy to return to PARIS PHOTO. The fair will be held at Grand Palais Éphémère, November 9 – 12. You can find us in booth A28 – where this year we celebrate 15 years of participation in the fair! For this edition of PARIS PHOTO the gallery has put together works by four contemporary positions studying aspects of memory. They are: Hannah Hughes, Roger Eberhard, Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer and Michael Lange. For further info on the fair follow the link here.

Book Signing: Gallery artist Mårten Langes‘ new publication »Threshold« was just released, you can meet the artist and get your signed copy at our booth #A28 on Saturday, November 11, between 2–3 p.m.

Dear friends of the gallery,

We are very pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition „Ich denke auch Familienbilder “ by Linn Schröder on Friday, October 27, at 6PM!

The images in Linn Schröder’s photographic series “Ich denke auch Familienbilder” (I Also Think Family Pictures) deal with one of the most basic tasks of photography, which is to capture and record memories. Family pictures are photographs that help us remember and often even create memories. They can also be images that only exist in our heads, created through stories and our own imagination. Linn Schröder combines these two thoughts in a poetic way and creates pictorial worlds which, through their surreal, magical, and often staged imagery, tell of astonishment, uncertainty, and perhaps even unease.

Linn Schröder traveled to Poland with her twin daughters and followed the footsteps of her mother-in-law, who had to flee to Germany as a young girl during World War II and passed down her experience in stories. This creates a connection between three generations: the grandmother, the mother, and the daughters. She also photographed a befriended family with twins at regular intervals and the boy next door, whom she encounters again and again. Schröder often works in black and white, which gives the images an air of universal validity. Seemingly identical nature shots that repeatedly interrupt the narrative flow reinforce this timelessness. At the same time, Linn Schröder’s work points far beyond personal experience. Associative images emerge that tell stories in themselves and tell us something about our humanity. In this photographic work, these worlds of thought are given an intense, mysteriously dreamlike, poetic stage.

Linn Schröder, born in 1977, has been a member of Ostkreuz-Agentur der Fotografen since 2004 and is a professor of photography at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg since 2016. Her work has received numerous awards and is exhibited internationally. “Ich denke auch Familienbilder”, her first book, was published by Hartmann Books in 2021.

Opening Reception on Friday, October 27, 6-9PM
Exhibition from October 28 to December 21, 2023

ROBERT MORAT GALERIE is very happy to announce the first large-scale institutional survey exhibition in Berlin for gallery artist Jessica Backhaus. It’s titled „The Nature of Things“ and opens at the Haus am Kleistpark, on October 19, at 7pm! The show includes photographs from her previous projects „Six Degrees of Freedom“ (2015), „A Trilogy“ (2017) and „Cut Outs“ (2021) as well as unseen, new work from her upcoming series „The Nature of Things“ (2023). We are very much looking forward to seeing you there!

Threshold, the new book by gallery artist Mårten Lange is now available through his website – simply follow the link here!

Threshold is a story about packing up, leaving and starting over, consisting of photos of empty apartments, shops and offices. The photos were gathered over the past five years in many different cities around the world. Every room contains traces of departures as well as the potential for new beginnings, and the book offers a dual reading – are you leaving or arriving?

Hardcover, paper over board, 16 x 22 cm 240 pages
193 duotone images and one short story
Limited edition of 500 copies
€35

We will be hosting a book signing at our booth during Paris Photo on Saturday, Nov 11 at 2pm!

Dear friends of the gallery,

To kick off the fall season, we are very pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition „Escapism“ by Roger Eberhard on Thursday, September 7, at 6 p.m. We are very much looking forward to seeing you!

In Switzerland, if you order coffee, it invariably comes with a portion of cream served in a small, brown plastic pot sealed with a peel-off foil lid. Since 1968, these lids have always featured a photograph. Over the years, a never-ending array of thousands of series of small images have circulated throughout the country and have formed an important part of the people’s collective visual memory.

Roger Eberhard appropriates these pictures using a high-resolution camera to create extreme close-ups. The final print is an enlarged reinterpretation of the original photograph, the CMYK color separation process is revealed. These patterns show the ink that constitutes the reproduction dot by dot, as with a multitude of brushstrokes. These patterns blur the lines between painting and photography, digital and analog, past and future, and, most of all, between reality and escapism.

Works by Roger Eberhard (*1984 Zurich, Switzerland) are exhibited internationally and can be found in important collections both public and private. The book to the series is published by Édition Images Vevey. Roger Eberhard lives and works in Stallikon (CH).

Opening Reception on Thursday, September 7, 6-9 p.m.
Exhibition from September 8 to October 21, 2023

Prix Pictet announced the 12 photographers shortlisted for the 10th cycle of the award and we are very happy that gallery artist Richard Renaldi is among them! This year‘s theme at Pictet is „Human“ and Richard contributes work from his series „Disturbed Harmonies“.

„My photographs represent the disturbed harmonies described in George Perkins Marsh’s 1864 book Man and Nature. They express an artist’s desire to pull men back into parallel with the natural world from which they have gone badly out of true.“ (Richard Renaldi)

@prix_pictet @renaldiphotos

Image: Desert Sagebrush

Gallery artist Christian Patterson is part of the group exhibition „Scrapbooks“, curated by Matthieu Orléan, at the Rencontres in Arles this year.

„I’II be showing one of my pandemic-era studio projects, Double Zero, which is a more archive- and research-based approach to the true crime story that inspired Redheaded Peckerwood. In Arles, it will take the form of a unique, site-specific installation of material from my personal archive and collection. While some of the installation has been planned, a lot of it will be made in an extemporaneous, scrapbook-like way, directly onto the walls of the space. Artists in the show include Stan Brakhage, William S. Burroughs, Derek Jarman, Jim Jarmusch, Jess, Stanley Kubrick, Chris Marker, Agnes Varda and Jane Wodening. It’s an amazing group of artists, and I feel very lucky to be part of it.“ (Christian Patterson)

Scrapbooks
3 July – 24 September 2023
10:00 a.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Espace van Gogh, Arles

„The images seen here were created for the exhibition catalog; the show will be more layered and dynamic. I’m very much looking forward to seeing the catalog, which has been published by Delpire and will be available at the festival and at a book signing with Matthieu Orléan and myself.“ (Christian Patterson)

@christian.patterson @matthieu_orlean @rencontresarles @delpireandco @librairiedupalais

ROBERT MORAT GALERIE is happy to be confirmed for PARIS PHOTO and looking forward to seeing you at the Grand Palais Éphémère November 8-12, where will present work by Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer, Hannah Hughes, Roger Eberhard and Michael Lange.

@lenaamuatzoemeyer @_h_annah_hughes @roger_eberhard @michaellangephotographs @parisphotofair

Dear friends of the gallery,

please join us for the opening of the exhibition „True Places Never Are“ by Italian photographer Matteo Di Giovanni on Thursday, June 1, 6–9pm. We very much look forward to seeing you!

“It’s not down on any map, true places never are.”
(Moby Dick, Herman Melville)

Over the course of the last four years, Italian photographer Matteo Di Giovanni has published three photo books: “I wish the world was even” (2019), “Blue Bar” (2020) and “I had to shed my skin” (2022). The exhibition presents a selection of prints from all three bodies of work. All three projects are studies of landscapes and all three are based on road-trips: “The road-trip is an important aspect in my photography. I’m not only attracted to lines, shapes and structures, but much more to anthropological, sociological and philosophical issues and this is where my interest for the interaction between people and landscape comes from, even if people are rarely present in my photographs”, explains Matteo di Giovanni.

“I wish the world was even”, describes a two-month journey from Milan to the North Pole, cutting through Europe vertically. “Blue Bar” is a study of the River Po, the 652 km stretch of water that cuts Italy into two parts, geographically and culturally. And the images in “I had to shed my skin” were taken in and around Pescara, a small coastal town on the Adriatic Sea in Central Italy where Matteo Di Giovanni was born. However, what connects all three series is a lack of geographical connotation: “These images really are not a description of a place!”, says di Giovanni. “The work really is about an aesthetic and lyrical metaphor for a human state, made of suspension and symbolic connections between images.” And: “Ultimately, the work deals with home, roots and the idea of belonging to a place that you don’t really feel connected to. But it’s also about youth, love, loss, discomfort and a change of perception.”

Matteo Di Giovanni, born in 1980, received an MA in Documentary Photography from the University of Westminster, London, in 2012. So far, he has published three monographs in a “loose trilogy”: “I wish the world was even” (2019), “Blue Bar” (2020) and “I had to shed my skin” (2022), all published by Artphilein Editions, Lugano. A new monograph titled „True Places Never Are“, edited by David Campany, is in preparation for publication next year. The work of Matteo Di Giovanni is exhibited internationally. He lives and works in Milan, Italy.

Opening Reception on Thursday, June 1, 6–9pm 
Exhibition from June 2 to July 29, 2023

GALLERY WEEKEND BERLIN is only a couple of days away and we are very much looking forward to seeing you in Linienstrasse! Bill Jacobson’s „when is a place“ is still on view at the gallery and we work special opening hours for you as follows:

Friday, April 28: 12pm–9pm
Saturday, April 28: 11am–7pm
Sunday, April 29: 11am–7pm

We are very happy that gallery artist Peter Puklus is included in „Modern Love (or Love in the Age of Cold Intimacies)“, a group show curated by Katerina Gregos at the ΕΜΣΤ Νational Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens! The show is on until May 28, don‘t miss it!

@peterpuklus @katerina.gregos @emstathens

Image: Panos Kokkinias

For all of you who cannot make it to the gallery to see Bill Jacobson’s exhibition “when is a place”, there is now a 3D virtual walk-through of the exhibition on ARTLAND. Please follow the link to access it!

Bernhard Fuchs‘ exhibition „AHORN“ at the Oldenburger Kunstverein assembles a selection of photographs from the projects „STRASSEN UND WEGE“, „HÖFE“ and „WALDUNGEN“, taken from 2004 to 2014 in the artists‘ native region in Upper Austria. Bernhard Fuchs studied in Düsseldorf and Leipzig and the center of life has been in Germany since his studies. All of his works, however, are created in the landscape of his origin, where he regularly seeks an inner dialogue with the area on forays and translates it into a pictorial language. These series were each created over a period of 3 to 6 years and each found its conclusion in a book publication.

Ahorn is located in the upper Mühlviertel and is a village scattered over the area with small-structured farms. This place is emblematic for the composition of this exhibition.

Image: Heuhaufen, Neuschlag, 2009, from the series „HÖFE“, analog C-Print, 23.5 x 21 cm, Ed. of 8

@oldenburgerkunstverein

Dear friends of the gallery,

on the occasion of EMOP in spring 2023, we are happy to be able to present new, out-of-focus, black-and-white photographic works by American artist Bill Jacobson.

New York-based artist Bill Jacobson first became known for his defocused portrait and urban landscape photographs which, in the 1990s, addressed feelings of loss in the midst of the AIDS crisis. Subsequently, from 2003 through 2017, the work shifted and became sharp, focused, and delineated – for instance in his well-known “Place (Series)” of 2015 that the gallery presented in Berlin in spring of 2018. Or in the series “figure, ground” (2016) of which three images are included in the show, mostly dealing with the outlines of human figures against the backdrop of landscape images.

Now in his 60s and thinking about both mortality and the uncertain times we live in, Jacobson is again exploring out-of-focus imagery in his new series titled “when is a place”. These contemplative landscape images were taken in 2018 in Virginia and in 2019 in the South of France. This new work also marks Jacobson’s return to analog silver gelatin printmaking. The large, 100 x 115 cm images are created by the artist in a traditional black-and-white darkroom.

Prior to moving to New York in 1982, Jacobson (*1955, Norwich, USA) received a BA from Brown University (1977) and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (1981). He has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, and his work is in the collections of The Guggenheim Museum; The Whitney Museum; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Brooklyn Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Victoria and Albert Museum, and many others.

For all of you who cannot make it to the gallery to see Lena Amut & Zoë Meyer’s exhibition “Artefakte und Modelle”, there is now a 3D virtual walk-through of the exhibition on ARTLAND. Please follow the link to access it!

EMOP, the European Month of Photography in Berlin, is only a couple of weeks away and we are very happy to participate with an exhibition of new works by Bill Jacobson titled „when is a place“. The exhibition will be opening on Friday, March 3, at 6pm and be on view until May 13! #savethedate

For all exhibitions, panels, artist talks and all the many events during EMOP’s packed opening weekend, please visit their new website by following the link here.

@emopberlin @bill_jacobson

„I wanted to create a program that focused on young, emerging positions in contemporary photography, a space for discoveries. The program very much followed my own interest. I was never interested in photography as visual design, we never showed fashion photography for example, or digitally created imagery. My interest in photography comes from looking at people like William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander, Steven Shore or Robert Adams. Other key figures that formed my vision were Arno Fischer and Sibylle Bergemann. There’s a famous quote by Arno Fischer: „A picture of a bus stop must be more than a picture of a bus stop!“ That is to say, my program was always interested in the photographic perception of the world, but also in the author’s commentary. So the program, I would say, is very much based on documentary photography. But especially since moving the gallery to Berlin, I have found myself opening up to photography‘s conversation with other media. Some of the artists we work with now create collages, drawings, sculptures – today I consider the gallery to be more a gallery for contemporary art than a pure photography gallery.“

Dear friends of the gallery,

we are starting into the new year with an artist reception for Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer, opening their exhibition of “Artefakte und Modelle” on Thursday, January 12 at 7pm and we very much look forward to seeing you!

The series “Artefakte und Modelle” by Lena Amuat and Zoë Meyer is a collection of objects that embody the human struggle for knowledge. Over twelve years in the making and numbering hundreds of images, the project inventories the models, artifacts, natural specimens and teaching objects that the two women have unearthed traveling to search through the archives and collections of European universities and natural history museums.

However, with information and provenance entirely exorcised from the titles of their images, we are left knowing almost nothing factual about each of the photographed items: not the collection they belong to or the place of that archive; nor when they date from, who made or found them or how they came to be collected; nor any explanation as to the ideas, theories and natural laws that each of the models apparently embodies. Instead, they are left to communicate through the power of their visual identity alone.

Each of the selected objects is treated to the artists’ mobile photo studio where they are posed in front of coloured paper backdrops (sometimes assembled with other items, but most often standing alone), seductively lit and skilfully shot. Going against the surge of digital, the Swiss duo embraces analog and the “hand-made” – from dark-room printing to carefully prepared color backdrops and hand-painted frames that they build themselves.

Dutch art historian Flor Linckens calls it “a series of enigmatic and decontextualized objects that are given a new life” and in her review of the work in the summer of 2022, she writes: “Elements from science, advertising, religion, art and nature are isolated and combined effortlessly in what could be described as encyclopedic cabinets of curiosities. In the work of Amuat and Meyer, the past and the present enter into a new relationship.

Lena Amuat (*1977) & Zoë Meyer (*1975) live and work in Zurich and Berlin. They both graduated from the University of the Arts in Zurich and collaborate since 2008. The book to the series “Artefakte und Modelle” was published by About Books, Zürich in 2021.

Dear friends of the gallery,

an eventful year comes to an end and we want to take the opportunity to thank our clients, artists, collaborators and visitors for their continuing support, interest and trust!

We were thrilled to be able to add new artists to our program this past year, Hannah Hughes (UK) and Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer (CH), and couldn’t be happier about the reception they received at art fair presentations at Photo London, UNSEEN Amsterdam and Paris Photo.

We want to thank the artists who exhibited with us in Berlin this year, Jessica Backhaus, Mårten Lange, José Pedro Cortes, Christopher Anderson and Michael Lange, for trusting us with their work.

The gallery is now closed for a short winter break, December 23 to January 11! We very much look forward to kicking off the new year with an artist reception for Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer, opening their exhibition of „Artefakte und Modelle“ on January 12 at 7pm! Please save the date!

Happy holidays and best wishes,
Robert Morat
Tobias Kappel

Michael Lange’s „Cold Mountain“ opens at our Berlin gallery on Thursday, October 20, 7pm.
We are very much looking forward to seeing you!

Michael Lange | Cold Mountain:

Over a period of six years, photographer Michael Lange embarked on extensive journeys to various regions of the French Alps. There he created a collection of impressive, meditative landscape images. In his review of the publication to the series, out with Hartmann Books in 2021, Stefan Fischer wrote in Süddeutsche Zeitung:

„The heaviest and the lightest come together in the mountains. Here the massive, seemingly immovable rock, piled thousands of meters high, chapped and mighty, sometimes covered by additional snow loads weighing tons. And there, wisps of clouds, driven together by the wind and immediately blown apart again, without place and without support. (…) Lange’s photographs from the French Alps are extraordinary. Because they sound out the border region between the just visible and the invisible. Because they capture the moment when the first structures just emerge from the darkness of night or from the thicket of clouds – or, conversely, when a curtain is drawn and a last fleeting glimpse is possible of what will be completely hidden a second later.“

Michael Lange (*1953) became known for meditative investigations of landscapes. The series „Wald“(Forrest) was published in 2012 by Hatje Cantz and gave Michael Lange international recognition as an artist working in photography. Just as in the follow-up project „Fluss“ (River), also published by Hatje Cantz in 2015, Lange is concerned with the search for stillness and an emotional relationship with nature. The publication of „Cold Mountain“, now available from Hartmann Books, concludes this trilogy of landscape projects. Michael Lange lives and works in Hamburg.

We will host an ARTIST TALK with Michael Lange and Dr. Christiane Stahl, Director of Alfred Erhardt Stiftung, on Saturday, November 5, at 3pm!

@michaellangephotographs @hartmann_projects @aestiftung

For all of you who cannot make it to the gallery to see Christopher Anderson’s exhibition “Family Trilogy”, there is now a 3D virtual walk-through of the exhibition on ARTLAND. Please follow the link to access it!

Gallery artist Roger Eberhard‘s new series „Escapism“ was on view during the Images Vevey visual arts biennial throughout the city – on billboards and public transportation. His solo show at Camera Museum Vevey, curated by Stefano Stoll, will continue until January 8!

About the series:

Escapism

In Switzerland, coffee is served with a small cup of cream whose aluminum lid features a miniature picture, making it probably the smallest image carrier in the country.

From picturesque Switzerland to foreign and exotic places, for the past 50 years these lids reproduced the world many times over. Thanks to their massive distribution throughout Switzerland, these miniatures helped shaping the visual and often stereotypical understanding of the world long before social media did. During several decades these illustrated lids were heavily collected, with people buying them at flea markets, in stores and at dedicated fairs for up to thousands of francs.

Images of exotic beaches, majestic icebergs or vast untouched deserts incite a feeling of Wanderlust – especially in a small landlocked country like Switzerland. They are inviting the viewers to escape the concerns of their daily lives while drinking a cup of coffee. The photographs in „Escapism“ are extreme close-ups of these lids’ imagery. On one hand the romantic landscape pictures on those lids evoke a sense of Fernweh, but they also seem to forebode the destruction of the planet’s ecosystem and the ecological costs of globalisation; The melting of the ice caps due to global warming or the exotic beaches which will cease to exist when the sea levels subsequently rise.

The photographs’ visible cmyk printing pattern, which originates from enlarging the lids’ miniature landscapes roughly 100 times, draws attention to the original production technique and invites for a close examination of the source material and to reflect on its ambiguity.

For more info, please follow the link!

The gallery is very happy to announce representation for Swiss artist duo Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer! To mark the occasion, we will present a solo booth of their work at the upcoming UNSEEN art fair in Amsterdam next week!

The series “Artefakte und Modelle” is a collection of objects that embody the human struggle for knowledge. Over twelve years in the making and numbering hundreds of images, the project inventories the models, artefacts, natural specimen and teaching objects that the two women have unearthed travelling to search through the archives and collections of European universities and natural history museums.

However, with information and provenance entirely exorcised from their titles, we are left knowing almost nothing factual about each of the photographed items: not the collection they belong to or the place of that archive; nor when they date from, who made or found them or how they came to be collected; nor any explanation as to the ideas, theories and natural laws that each of the models apparently embodies. Instead, they are left to communicate through the power of their visual identity alone.

Each of the selected objects is treated to the artists’ mobile photo studio where they are posed in front of coloured paper backdrops (sometimes assembled with other items, but most often standing alone), seductively lit and skilfully shot.

Going against the surge of digital, the duo embrace analogue and the “hand-made” – from dark-room printing to carefully prepared color backdrops and hand painted frames that they build themselves.

A book to the series has been published by About Books in 2021. A beautiful exhibition of the work, curated by Diana Poole, was presented by TheEyeSees during this year‘s Rencontres in Arles.

Lena Amuat (*1977) & Zoë Meyer (*1975) live and work in Zurich and Berlin. They both graduated from the University of the Arts in Zurich and collaborate since 2008.

@lenaamuatzoemeyer @unseenamsterdam

Save the Date: Christopher Anderson’s exhibition “Family Trilogy” opens Saturday, September 3, 6pm!

Christopher Anderson first received international attention for his documentary work from conflict zones all over the world and is a member of Magnum since 2005. The birth of his son in 2008 became the starting point for a very personal, intimate project.

“For many years I have traveled extensively to document the emotional experiences of others. It feels like everything I ever photographed only prepared me for this project. I think this series of photographs is my most important work, they are a record of love and a reflection on the seasonal nature of life.” (Christopher Anderson)

“Son”, first published in 2012 by Kehrer, gained critical acclaim and was awarded the German LeadAward in 2013. In 2020, Stanley/Barker Books published a sequel, this time devoted to Anderson’s daughter, titled “Pia”. The sun-filled portraits and images of family scenes and domestic life in this body of work condense into an emotional ode to childhood. “Pia” became a great publishing success, gained critical acclaim and sold out fast. Now both, a second edition of “Pia” and a new, reviewed, updated edition of “Son” have been released and are both available through Stanley/Barker Books.

A third book, dedicated to his wife, Marion, is in preparation for release in November. “His new book “Marion”, marks the closing chapter of a trilogy of books that chronicles their lives, and loves in beautiful depth over the course of their partnership.” (Stanley/Barker)

ROBERT MORAT GALERIE is very happy to be able to present in Berlin an exhibition of images from all three series in fall 2022 on occasion of BERLIN PHOTO WEEK and the 75th anniversary of Magnum Photos.

August 1 to September 2 the gallery is closed! On September 3 at 6pm we will be kicking off the fall season by opening Christopher Anderson’s „Family Trilogy“ and we very much look forward to seeing you back at the gallery then during Berlin Photo Week. Until then, have a sunny summer!

Image: Christopher Anderson, Untitled, 2019

The show „WISH I WERE HERE“, is a large-scale retrospective exhibition of works by gallery artist Bertien van Manen. It coincides with the publication of ARCHIVE (Mack Books, London), edited and designed by Hans Gremmen. The exhibition is curated by Anne Ruygt and runs until August 28 at the Fotomuseum Antwerp. Don‘t miss it!

Should you be in Arles for the Les Rencontres, please make sure not to miss „SONGS OF THE SKY, Photography & the Cloud“, a group show curated by Kathrin Schönegg and presented by C/O Berlin.

The exhibition includes work by two gallery artists – Simon Roberts contributes the poetic cyanotypes from his series „The Celestials“ and Andy Sewell shows a beautiful installation of prints from his project „Known and Strange Things Pass“. The show is installed at Monoprix, Place Lamartine!

About the exhibition:
„Thinking about photography today entails a consideration of the infrastructures that form and organize networks. Regardless of whether images are generated by surveillance cameras and satellites or consist of digitized archival material or personal vacation photographs on our smartphones and laptops, they are all saved on the cloud operated by artificial intelligence. And so, similar to the way that one hundred years ago clouds marked the beginning of abstraction in photography, the interaction of contemporary artists with the cloud reflects the twenty-first century’s visions of the future.
Curated by Dr. Kathrin Schönegg, the exhibition juxtaposes historical and contemporary cloud photographs that examine clouds as a motif and a
metaphor.“

It is accompanied by a beautiful catalog published by Spector Books, Leipzig.

Image: Andy Sewell‘s installation of works from the series „Known and Strange Things Pass“

Italian photographer Matteo di Giovanni released the third book of what he calls a „loose trilogy“, published by Artphilein Editions. After „I wish the world was even“ and „Blue Bar“, the third publication is titled „I had to shed my skin“ and includes a brilliant text by Aaron Schuman.

We are very much looking forward to presenting a selection of works from all three series in a solo show at the gallery in Berlin next year. For more info on the latest publication and the entire trilogy, please follow the link here.

ROBERT MORAT GALERIE is happy to return to Paris in fall and to have been confirmed for PARIS PHOTO 2022! The fair will be held from November 9 to 13 at the Grand Palais Éphémère.

We will be showing works by Hannah Hughes, Jessica Backhaus, Ron Jude and Bill Jacobson and are very much looking forward to seeing you there!

For all of you who cannot make it to the gallery to see José Pedro Cortes’ exhibition “BRIGHT RED”, there is now a 3D virtual walk-through of the exhibition on ARTLAND. Please follow the link to access it!

Palm Tree Workshops invited gallery artist Jessica Backhaus and Robert Morat to host a workshop on the beautiful island of Santorini/Greece in fall, October 3-7! Applications are now open!

During this workshop, the participants will receive some insight into a long term relationship between an artist and her gallery. Jessica Backhaus will talk about her work, her inspirations and guide you through the process of creating new work. As a galerist, Robert Morat has been representing Jessica‘s work for almost 15 years and will try to share his experiences in the international art market and answer any question you could possibly have: How to approach a gallery, how to prepare a portfolio, what to expect and which mistakes to avoid. Together with the participants, they will discuss the process of editing, sequencing, image selection and presentation, working with your material and the images you create during the workshop on Santorini.

For more info, please click the link!

Dear friends of the gallery,

we cordially invite you to the opening of the exhibition “Bright Red” by Portuguese artist José Pedro Cortes on Thursday, May 19.

The title alludes to a visual deficiency very common in human males, a mild color blindness that shifts the color red (or what is known as red) to green, changing the reading of the color spectrum. This implies that, as a compensation mechanism, many color-blind men “read” the color red in context and not as stand-alone information. Using this example as a metaphor, Cortes underlines that it is through contextual reading that we know what a certain color is, and, in a broader sense, how to interpret the world around us.

His photographs – being landscapes, portraits or still lives – function as a map of visual possibilities. Like Cortes says: “The time of my images reflects our time of constant doubt: impulse or fabrication, vulnerability or strength, surface or something more.”

José Pedro Cortes (*1976, Porto, PT), completed a Master of Arts in Photography at Kent Institute of Art and Design (Rochester, UK). His work has been published and exhibited internationally. Besides his artistic photographic work, he is the founder and editor of Pierre von Kleist editions. He lives and works in Lisbon

With kind support from:

We are very happy to announce representation for British artist Hannah Hughes. To mark the occasion, the gallery will present her work in a solo booth at the upcoming PHOTO LONDON next week!

Hannah Hughes is a visual artist working across photography, collage and sculpture. Her work explores the relationship between image, sculpture and language, focusing on the potential of negative space and the salvaging and re-use of discarded materials. Her research takes root from histories of recycling and archaeology of discarded materials, where value is found on the sidelines. It is in part a response to ‘Femmage’ (a feminist term coined by Miriam Schapiro and Melissa Meyer in the 1970s to describe covert art practices from matter found in the home), reconsidering our relationship to domestic materials today, and how these can be saved and re-configured.

Hughes’s practice involves strategies of fragmentation and reconstruction. Her two- dimensional collages are often described as either flat sculptures or sculptural photographs. The shapes in the collages originate from outside edges and negative areas surrounding figures and objects, which have evolved into an ongoing regenerative alphabet of forms.

She uses materials that invite the memory of everyday touch, such as paper stocks used in glossy magazines, pulp packaging, and clay. This focus on tactility positions the work in relation to the boundaries of the body, and the spaces created where bodies intersect with their surroundings.
She examines edges within the photographic image, capturing movement through internal layers and seams. For example, In her most recent series of two-part C-Type collages, one form intersects the surface of another creating a visible border within the photograph, which can be viewed fully from the side.

Hannah Hughes (*1975, UK) graduated from the University of Brighton in 1997 and has since exhibited in the UK and internationally. She lives and works in London.

@_h_annah_hughes @photolondonfair

For all of you who cannot make it to the gallery to see Mårten Lange’s „GHOST WITNESS”, there is now a 3D virtual walk-through of the exhibition on ARTLAND. Please follow the link to access it!

The gallery will be closed for a short break from April 15 to April 18. Mårten Lange‘s show „GHOST WITNESS“ is open Tuesday to Thursday, 12-6pm, this week and afterward continues throughout Berlin Gallery Weekend and until May 14. For more info on the show, please follow the link.

PHOTO LONDON has announced its 2022 exhibitors and we are very much looking forward to returning to Somerset House May 12-15! See the full list of participating galleries on their website at photolondon.org. To already book tickets, you can follow the link here.

Dear friends of the gallery,

we cordially invite you to the opening of Mårten Lange’s exhibition of works from his latest series GHOST WITNESS on Thursday, March 31. Exhibition from April 1 to May 14 2022.

To help stop the further spread of COVID19, we have decided not to host an evening reception at this time.

Instead, we will be working special opening hours: the gallery will be open 12–9pm! Complying with current regulations in Berlin, the 3G rule will apply. During the evening hours, 6–9pm, the artist will be present. We are very much looking forward to seeing you!

Photographing hypermodern urban landscapes through the ghostly haze of LEDs and smog, Mårten Lange’s new work from China shows a country haunted as much by its past as by its future. Made in 2018 and 2019 in the six largest cities of the country, the series depicts urban places that have expanded rapidly in recent years and that appear both futuristic and suspended outside of time. Following Lange’s long-time fascination with ideas of utopia and dystopia, this is his most extensive work to date.

Mårten Lange (*1984, Gothenburg, SE), studied photography at the University of Gothenburg and the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, United Kingdom. He received international attention and critical acclaim for the publication of his series “Another Language” (Mack Books, London) in 2012. Since then, Lange has published two new series, “Citizen” (Études Books, Paris, 2015) and “The Mechanism” (Mack Books, London, 2018) and his work has been exhibited internationally, most notably at Kunsthalle Hamburg and Moderna Museet in Stockholm (both in 2018), at the Rencontres d’Arles in 2019 and FOAM in Amsterdam in 2020. The book to the series “Ghost Witness” has been published in 2020 by Loose Joints. Mårten Lange lives and works in Malmö, Sweden.

The war in Ukraine has put artists in Ukraine and neighboring countries at high risk. In response, an informal group of international artists has come together to support the activist non-profit organization Artist at Risk (AR).

Each artist has donated an artwork as an open edition print. Gallery artist Peter Puklus contributed the photograph shown here. All proceeds from sales will help Artists at Risk facilitate emergency travel, shelter and financial support to help artists gain safety.

THE PRINT SALE WILL LAUNCH TUESDAY, MARCH 15th AT 00:01 CET.

Participating artists include:
Hito Steyerl, Pierre Huyghe, Nan Goldin, Isaac Julien, Thomas Struth, Tacita Dean, Gabriel Orozco, Rosemarie Trockel, Luc Tuymans, Elizabeth Peyton, Thomas Demand, Matthew Barney, Jeremy Deller, Laure Provoust, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Lisa Brice, Julian Schnabel, Bae Bien-U, Camille Henrot, Subodh Guptah, Sam Durant, Fiona Banner, Jim Hodges, Miranda July, Anne Imhoff, Cyprien Gaillard, Thomas Hirschorn, Klara Liden, James Welling, Ketuta Alexei Meskhishvili, Doug Aitken, Julietta Aranda, Thea Djordjadze, Andro Wekua, Allison Katz, Kon Trubkovich, Lynne Tillman, Francesco Clemente, Sanya Kantarovsky, Nedko Solakov, CAConrad, Ives Maes, Celine Condorelli, Jonas Staal, Yves Mettler, Rafaella Crispino, Slavs & Tartars, Tai Shani, Olga Balm, Amy Sillman, Ben Rivers, Luiza Simons, Frank Thiel, Ida Ekblad, Nastio Mosquito, Sarah Entwistle, Marc Siebenhüner, Eliza Douglas, Lisa Oppenheim, Peter Puklus, Sophie Thun, Silya Yvette, Luigi Ontani, Johannes Ceccelli Estate, Carmen Winant, Paul Knight.

Solidarity Prints for Artists at Risk (AR) is a Donor Advised Foundation Fund (DAF) approved and held by TrustBridge Global Network for and on behalf of Artists at Risk.

Prints are €200 each, excluding shipping. Please follow the link here or check: @artistsatrisk

Hans-Christian Schink at Von der Heydt-Museum: Freundschaftsanfrage – Friendship Request – is a new series of exhibitions initiated at Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal. The concept aims to invite a contemporary artist and put his/her works in dialogue with pieces taken out of the large museum collection of 16th to 21st-century paintings. The first artist to enter such a dialogue is gallery artist Hans-Christian Schink. The show is open to the public after March 1, for more info please follow the link.

Pictured here is Hans Christian Schink „Zwischen Lemmerstdorf und Kleisthöhe“, 2016 from his series „Hinterland“

Robert Morat sat down with Christian Klant and Florian W. Müller at BFF Art Lab for a conversation about photography in the arts and the joys and sorrows of gallery work. To listen in on Spotify, please follow the link in bio – or find it wherever you listen to your podcasts. (Conversation in German)

„The ocean is the protagonist here. Its endless, syncopated tide rhythm is the only thing we can actually see, the potent metaphor of the constant relay of memories, stories, feelings, emotions, lives – data, as they are called nowadays – we send and receive, back and forth, on its shores.“

For some of the most accomplished writing about photography, head over to C4 Journal to find Elisa Medde‘s text on Andy Sewell’s „Known and Strange Things Pass“. The work is currently on view at C/O Berlin (as pictured here) and will travel on to Arles in the summer. The beautiful book was published at Skinnerbox. The gallery presented the work in a solo exhibition in fall 2021.

Songs of the Sky, Photography & The Cloud, C/O Berlin, 2021
Installation view © C/O Berlin Foundation, David von Becker  

@c4journal @sewelland @elsmdd @skinnerboox @coberlin

For all of you who cannot make it to the gallery to see Jessica Backhaus’ „CUT OUTS”, there is now a 3D virtual walk-through of the exhibition on ARTLAND. Please follow the link to access it!

We are very proud of gallery artist Jessica Backhaus who made the cover of the January #22 issue of art – Kunstmagazin! Furthermore, we are grateful for an insightful text by Sabina Paries and a generous 10 page spread reviewing Jessica‘s latest series CUT OUTS coinciding with the exhibition of the work at our Berlin gallery!

@jessica_backhaus @art.kunstmagazin @berlienparies

Dear friends of the gallery,

we cordially invite you to the opening of Jessica Backhaus‘ exhibition of works from her latest series CUT OUTS on Friday, January 14. Exhibition from January 15 to March 26 2022.

To help stop the further spread of COVID19, we have decided not to host an evening reception at this time.

Instead we will be working special opening hours throughout the day: On Friday January 14 the gallery will be open 12–9pm! Complying with current regulations in Berlin, the 2G rule will apply and a maximum of 15 people will be admitted into the space at the same time. During the evening hours, 6–9pm, the artist will be present. We are very much looking forward to seeing you!

Color and form, light and shadow – the images in Jessica Backhaus’ series “Cut Outs” are created using the basic elements of photography. In her previous publication “A Trilogy” (Kehrer, 2017), Jessica Backhaus took a path into abstraction that is consistently continued here – using alltogether photographic means: Cut out transparent papers are arranged on a paper backdrop, exposed to the sun and photographed. The papers reacts to the intense heat, deform, rise, contract, cast shadows – a summer’s dance. The photographer, who arranged and staged these compositions, becomes an observer of processes over which she has only limited influence. She is the documentarist of a visual experiment, a poetic choreography of intense colors in the sunlight.

Jessica Backhaus (*1970, Cuxhaven, GER) is considered one of the most important voices in contemporary photography out of Germany today. Her work has been exhibited internationally in numerous solo and group shows, for example at the National Portrait Gallery, London, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin and Marta Herford. In 2013, Kunsthalle Erfurt dedicated a first large scale museum solo exhibition to her work.

Jessica Backhaus’ works also have their permanent place in important collections, for example in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Margulies Collection, Miami, the Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Frankfurt and the ING Art Collection, Brussels. Jessica Backhaus studied photography and visual communication in Paris, spent formative years living in New York and today lives and works in Berlin. Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, has published eight monographs so far. “Cut Outs“, designed by Hannah Feldmeier, was published in the spring of 2021 and has been shortlisted for the Rencontres d’Arles Book Award and for the Paris Photo Aperture Foundation Award for “Photobook of the Year“.

For all of you who cannot make it to the gallery to see Ron Jude’s „12 Hz”, there is now a 3D virtual walk-through of the exhibition on ARTLAND. Please follow the link to access it!

Dear friends of the gallery,

we would like to cordially invite you to the opening oh 12 Hz by Ron Jude on Friday, November 5 at 7pm!

“Acts of homage and acts of witness, these photographs induce the requisite wonder and gratitude to spur a much-needed sense of accountability.”
– Los Angeles Times

12 Hz – the lowest sound threshold of human hearing – suggests imperceptible forces, from plate tectonics to the ocean tides, from cycles of growth and decay in the forest, to the incomprehensibility of geological spans of time. The photographs in Ron Jude’s „12 Hz“ allude to the ungraspable scale and veiled mechanics of these phenomena, while acknowledging a desire to gain a broader perspective, beyond the human enterprise, in a time of ecological and political crisis.

“12 Hz” consists of images of lava tubes and flows, tidal currents, glacial ice and welded tuff formations: pictures describing the raw materials of the planet, those that make organic life possible. The images were made in multiple locations – from the high lava plains, gorges and caves in the state of Oregon, to the glaciers of Iceland and lava flows of Kilauea in Hawaii.

Jude’s photographs do not attempt to tell us how to live or what we have done wrong, nor do they reduce the landscape to something sentimental, tame and possessable. Rather, they endeavour to describe and reckon with forces in our physical world that operate independently of anthropocentric experience. The photographs in 12 Hz work in service to a simple premise: that change is constant, whether we are able to perceive it or not. By stepping back to look at the larger system of flux – of which we are only a small part – this body of work evokes us to find our own pulse, as it were, and assert an appropriately scaled sense of being within the hierarchy of this system.

The artist will be present.

Opening reception on Friday, November 6, 7-9pm

Exhibition from November 6 to December 23 2021

We are very happy to announce that gallery artist Peter Puklus‘ new book „Hero Mother – How to build a House“ is released by Witty Books, co-published by Images Veyvey, where the project won the Grand Prix des Images in 2017 and was first exhibited during the Festival des Images in Vevey, Switzerland in 2018.

The festival catalog at the time outlined Puklus’ project as follows:

The Hero Mother – How to build a House

2016 – 2020

Puklus deconstructs and questions the dynamics of the pre-established female and male roles: motherhood as an alleged heroic activity and the supposed duty of the father to build and protect the home. His search breaks down the traditional symbols associated with maternal and paternal figures in a playful yet critical way. Outside the confines of the photographic studio, he develops an original visual vocabulary around parental life and issues related to the construction of the family nucleus. Presented and internationally premiered at Images Vevey, Switzerland, the installation reconstructs the everyday life and unfolds in the intimacy of home: in each room, the viewer discovers the complexity of ourselves.
(Text by @coknol , Images Festival catalogue 2018)

To order your copy, please follow the link!

Also: The project will be part of the inaugural exhibition at L‘APPARTEMENT, a new permanent space for contemporary photography in Vevey, opening Oct 13!

Gallery artist Peter Bialobrzeskis and publisher The Velvet Cell release five new titles in their ongoing publication project of City Diaries: Minsk Diary (1), Dhaka Diary (2), Belfast Diary (3), Linz Diary (4) and Yangon Diary (5).

For the first time, five new City Diaries are published together as a set. These five books, like the previous ten already published, map a photographic archive of the city at the beginning of the 21st century.

Previously published are: Cairo Diary, Taipei Diary, Athens Diary, Wolfsburg Diary, Kochi Diary, Zurich Diary, Beirut Diary, Wuhan Diary, Budapest Diary and Osaka Diary.

City Diaries is a joint publishing project by The Velvet Cell and award-winning German photographer Peter Bialobrzeski. Each diary focuses on a single city against the backdrop of a rapidly urbanizing world. All books were designed by Andrea Rauschenbusch, the series maintain the same size of 14x21cm, contain 51 double-page photographs and a diary text.

For more info and more images, please follow the link.

Robert Morat Galerie is pleased to announce that gallery artist Jessica Backhaus‘ latest book CUT OUTS, designed by Hannah Feldmeier and published by Kehrer Verlag, has been nominated for The Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards as PhotoBook of the Year!

The gallery has shown prints from the series in solo presentations at both Photo London and photo basel – after a premiere during the Les Rencontres d’Arles opening week in a collaboration with The Eye Sees.
We will also present the work in our booth at PARIS PHOTO and keep our fingers crossed for the announcement of this year‘s winners at the Grand Palais Éphémère in Paris in November!

On January 14 2022 we will open the exhibition of CUT OUTS at the gallery in Berlin that will run through March! Save the date!

For all of you who cannot make it to the gallery to see Andy Sewell’s „Known and Strange Things Pass”, there is now a 3D virtual walk through the exhibition on ARTLAND. Please follow the link to access it!

Commenting on the current discussion around NFTs and reflecting on the notion of collecting, gallery artist Roger Eberhard has released a series of NFTs titled „KRD“:

In the late 70s, people in Switzerland began to collect the lids of the little plastic pots of cream that are served with each coffee. What started as a quaint amusement turned into a multimillion dollars scene by the mid-90s, with some collectors spending over 6000$ on a handful of lids. A decade later the cream pot lid mania faded into oblivion and the lids lost their „value“.

KRD (the German abbreviation for „Kaffeerahmdeckeli“) is a series of 50 photographs of cream pot lids by Roger Eberhard. Each lid’s subject shows a collectible that is or once was collected and sought after. From guns and garden gnomes to expensive artworks and airplanes, KRD shows how collecting can be manifold and oftentimes quite absurd. And how some hypes just don’t endure time.

Simply follow the link to find out more!

BERLIN ART WEEK kicks off! Many galleries and institutions throughout the city present new exhibition projects with a focus on young, emerging positions. For more on all things happening in Berlin this week, please follow the link!

At our gallery in Linienstr. 107 Andy Sewell‘s „Known and Strange Things Pass“ is on view and we are working SPECIAL OPENING HOURS this week: Tuesday – Sunday 12-6pm!

We are very much looking forward to seeing you!

Dear friends of the gallery,

we would like to cordially invite you to an artist reception and exhibition opening on Thursday, September 2 at 7pm!

Before, at 6pm, we are hosting a book signing, guided tour of the exhibition and artist talk with Andy Sewell and Robert Morat. We are very much looking forward to welcoming you then!

“Known and Strange Things Pass is about the deep and complex entanglement of technology with contemporary life. It’s about the immediacy of touch and the commonplace miracle of action at a distance; the porosity of the boundaries that hold things apart, and the fragility of the bonds that lock them together.” (Eugenie Shinkle, 1000 Words Magazine)

The transatlantic communications link between Europe and North America, the fiber optic lines of the deep-sea cable through which most of our daily data communication flows, and the actual places where these cables make landfall on both sides of the Atlantic, for British photographer Andy Sewell become threads in a web of analogies.

The series combines technology studies and landscape images taken along the coastlines on both sides of the Atlantic. The project‘s non-linear narrative and associative editing become an analogy of our modern life: “Things in different spatial or temporal phases intertwine and coexist. Worlds we think of as separate bleed into each other – the near and the distant, the ocean and the internet, the physical and the virtual, what we think of as the natural with the cultural and the technological.”

Andy Sewell, born 1978, lives and works in London. His work is exhibited internationally and can be found in important collections such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London or the Columbia University Art Collection, New York. The book to the exhibition was published by Skinnerbox.

Opening Reception:
on Thursday, September 02 2021,  7-9 pm
Exhibition:
from September 03 to October 30, 2021

Dear friends of the gallery,

while the gallery goes into a summer break after July 31, Robert Morat Galerie is pleased to present an exhibition project organized by its director Tobias Kappel.

»open-ended photography« aims to expand the gallery program through a multiplicity of forms and possibilities, all rooted in photography but interested in a conversation about the mutability of the medium as a defining condition.
Seven Berlin-based artists are contributing works that transcend documentary approaches commonly associated with photographic images. Their experimental access manifests itself in digital, abstract as well as material transformations of the medium. Building on the notion that a translation of reality into another medium will always change that reality, the exhibition guides its audience away from the predominant memorial aspect of photography to open up a more independent way of looking and thinking in images.

Artists: David Hanes, Nora Heinisch, Tobias Kappel, Victoria Pidust, Susanne Schwieter, Stefanie Seufert, Juliane Tübke

VERNISSAGE: SA August 7, 6pm

>>> 8pm Premiere/Screening: »Why can’t I hold all these projections?« by Nora Heinisch

All artists will be present at the opening.

EXHIBITION: August 7–29, 2021

OPENING HOURS: TH 3-9pm  FR 2-6pm  SA 11am-5pm

GUIDED TOURS: TH August 19, 7pm  SA August 21, 3pm

SCREENINGS: TH August 19, 8pm  SA August 21, 4pm

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The term »open-ended photography« was introduced by Lyle Rexer in his highly acclaimed book about the rise of abstraction in photography titled »The Edge of Vision«.

PHOTO BASEL has announced its exhibitor list and we are very much looking forward to our first participation in the fair September 21-26! For more info and to see the full list of galleries, please click the link for more information.

PHOTO LONDON has announced its exhibitor list and we are very much looking forward to returning to Somerset House September 9-12! For more info and to see the full list of participating galleries, please follow the link.

The gallery is delighted to return to Paris in fall and to have been confirmed for PARIS PHOTO. The fair will be held from November 9 to 14 at the Grand Palais Éphémère, a temporary structure on Champs de Mars, while the Grand Palais is undergoing renovation. We are very much looking forward to seeing you there!