MANFRED WILLMANN - Albertina Museum (en) - a podcast by CastYourArt.com

MANFRED WILLMANN - Albertina Museum
At the Albertina Museum in Vienna, currently a comprehensive solo exhibition is dedicated to the influential photographer Manfred Willmann (born 1952 in Graz) and his unique visual vocabulary. Curated by Anna Hanreich, the show sheds light on crucial aspects on Willmann’s artwork, spanning a period from the late 1970s until today.

Six thematic blocks with a total of about 270 prints demonstrate the artist’s very direct and subjective perspective and his highly original visual vocabulary. In art photography of the 1970s and 1980s color and flashlight was frowned on and associated with advertising and commercialism. Willmann used both as artistic tools, making him a pioneer in this regard in Austria. Day and night, inside and outside, he used flashlight, directing the viewer‘s gaze to details, putting emphasis on the subjects within their surrounding, especially accentuating surfaces, textures and materials. By his lighting Willmann gives the colors more intensity and high contrasts, objects become more vivid and prominent.

Rural life and its daily routine in a key theme in the pictures, Willmann changes between landscapes, still lifes and people. In his series „The World is Beautiful“ (1981-1983), there are pictures of remains of banquets, of plants or portraits of rural residents. In his probably most famous group of works, „The Country“ (1981-1993), Willmann shows his environment, Styria’s south, anything but idyllic: Unplastered houses, rusty vehicles, shoddy henhouses and dead animals.
In „Black and Gold“ (1979-1981) the artist deals with his own biography, as he does in the cycle „For Christine“ (1984-1988) with his wife Christine Frisinghelli who, together with him, founded and edited the renowned photographic magazine Camera Austria International, from 1980 to 2010. Willmann was also head of the photography department of Forum Stadtpark as well as responsible for numerous photography exhibitions of the festival Steirischer Herbst.

The Albertina also shows newer work, like the series „Blitz und Enzianblau“ (2005) and also very recent pictures, in „2018/2017“ (2017/18), with prints of extremely detailed close-up photographs taken with a digital camera.

The six series spanning the period from 1979 until 2018 demonstrate the complexity of Willmann’s photographic oeuvre as well as the many facets of (Austrian) country life.

Certain topics keep coming up in the pictures time and again: the countryside as a habitat and motif keeps getting documented, the flashlight extracting the subject from its environment. Wilmann’s camera works like a finger, pointing to something in the most direct possible way: Look at this! Centered, close-up and without disruptions. If necessary the photographer moves around the subject, changing his own position while the motif stays undisturbed. The photograph as a medium steps back and the object becomes the signifier, and not what is happening in the image’s edges or in the specific moment of shooting the picture. The subject dictates the composition coming to a life of its own.
Ultimately, the documentary character of the pictures is only an artistic tool, above all these photographs tell us about the medium of photography itself.

All photographs of the exhibition are in the possession of the Albertina or from the artist’s own collection. The most important works by the artist are in the exhibition catalogue, edited by Klaus Albrecht Schröder and Anna Hanreich: Manfred Willmann. Hardcover, 200 pgs., 29,90 € in the Albertina shop or online on albertina.at. The exhibition is on view from 8 February 2019 until 26 May 2019. (written by Cem Angeli)

Albertina Museum | www.albertina.at
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