Natural Sources
Jochen Lempert
January 11 - March 31, 2023
Press Release
Jochen Lempert photographs the natural world in the most diverse contexts: from their habitat to the museums, from the zoo to the urban environment, in remote places or banal settings and situations. Lempert compiles his findings in a vast archive of images covering an ample spectrum, from common everyday views, to compositions that tend towards abstraction. This interest in the natural world as a subject has been further complemented by his exploration of the properties and materiality of the photographic image. Analogue, black and white, hand-printed in the darkroom, his photographs resist categorization and confront the canons of today’s aesthetic.
In his presentations, Lempert uses groupings and scale to respond to the exhibition space. He places and selects the photographs thoughtfully, always looking for cross-references and associations, uncovering subtle correspondences. Lempert’s arrangements give us new insights into our own place within the patterns, the structures and even the randomness or the order of the natural world.
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About the artist
Jochen Lempert
b. 1958 in Moers, Germany / Lives and works in Hamburg, Germany
Before choosing photography as the medium for his artistic work, Lempert dedicated himself to the practice of experimental film within the Schmelzdahin collective (1979-89). In parallel to this activity, between 1980 and 1988, he studied Biology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn. In 1995 he received the Ars Viva 95/96 Photographie Prize. He was guest professor at the HFK in Hamburg and he won a residency at the German Academy's Villa Massimo in Rome (2009-2010). In 2014, he was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and in 2017 he was awarded the prestigious Camera Austria Award for Contemporary Photography.
His work has been shown internationally with prominent solo exhibitions at Culturgest Lisbon (2009), the Ludwig Museum in Cologne (2010), Rochester Art Center, Minneapolis, and Midway Contemporary Art Center also in Minneapolis (2012); the Hamburger Kunsthalle (2013) the Cincinnati Art Museum, United States (2015); the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, Canada (2016); The Izu Photo Museum in Japan (2016-2017); the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Germany (2018); the Musée départemental d'art contemporain de Rochechouart, France (2018); the Bildmuseet, Umea University, Umea, Sweden (2018); CA2M, Centro de Arte dos de Mayo, Madrid, Spain (2018); Kunsthaus Wien, Vienna, Austria (2018); Camera Austria, Graz, Austria (2019); and Le Crédac, Centre d’Art Contemporain d’Ivry, Ivry-sur Seine, France (2020), Portikus, Frankfurt Germany (2022); Centre Pompiduo, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, France (2022); Huis Marseille, Museum Fotografie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2022).
His works are included in public collections such as the MOMA in New York and the Cincinnati Art Museum (USA); “La Caixa” collection, Barcelona (Spain); Colección CA2M, Comunidad de Madrid, Madrid (Spain); Per amor a l'art collection, Valencia (Spain); Museum Ludwig, Museum Folkwang, Sammlung Zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Germany); Centre Nationale des Arts Plastiques (France); Kadist Art Foundation in Paris (France); Huis Marseille, Museum voor Fotografie (Netherlands), and the Nouveau Museé National de Monaco, among many others.
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This exhibition is in collaboration with ProjecteSD, Barcelona.