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Exhibition: ‘Tobias Zielony: The Fall’ at Museum Folkwang, Essen

Exhibition dates: 25th June – 26th September, 2021

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Andrej
2016
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

A German artist who pictures the intersection between youth culture, identity and (self) representation.

Unlike the work of Michael Schmidt with that artist’s intimate association with the city of Berlin, Zielony’s photographs could have been taken anywhere in the world. With their contextless backgrounds Zielony’s figures – whether strangely lit and configured automatons, eerie apartment blocks that inhabit an alien world or anonymous humanoids fixed in mundane urban spaces – seem to be more about the artist and how he perceives the world than about the subject itself.

Having said that, these memorable photographs of introspective youths seem to hover in space between the preter/natural – suspended between the mundane and the miraculous.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS. My friend and mentor said to me, “What I am interested in, is how Zielony came to make such interesting aesthetic decisions – his work is the most interesting in terms of appearance for a long time. It is so easy to make things messy but he manages to remain so clean. What does he do, what does he say to himself to make this happen?”

Many thankx to the Museum Folkwang for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

TOBIAS ZIELONY. The Fall – Trailer

With The Fall, the Folkwang Museum is showing the first overview exhibition of works by the photo and video artist Tobias Zielony (b. 1973 in Wuppertal). A total of eleven video works, seven photo series, two room installations and a digital slide show with around 150 photographs alone allow for the first time a comprehensive look at Zielony’s artistic work over the past twenty years.

In his work, Tobias Zielony repeatedly deals with the concept of youth culture in relation to origin, representation and fashion and the associated definition of identity in the changing media reality. The emergence of social networks and the exchange of countless photographic images have fundamentally changed the idea of the self and the forms of (self) representation. Zielony shows his protagonists: inside as self-confident participants in this interplay, who act despite cultural and social differences in a global cosmos of social codes and self-portraits.

Tobias Zielony stands in a long line of tradition in artistic photography and is considered by many younger picture makers to be pioneering. Few photographers of his generation have observed social and media developments as carefully and translated them into a contemporary visual language as he has. For the first time, “The Fall” offers the opportunity to read Zielony’s imagery, which is located in the most diverse regions of the world, as global phenomena in their specific forms.

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Glow
2001
From Curfew, Bristol, Newport
C-print
41.4 x 42cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Hochhaus
2003
From Ha Neu
C-print
46 x 69cm
Museum Folkwang, Essen
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Aral-1
2004
From Tankstelle
C-Print
48 x 72cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Park
2006
From Big Sexyland
C-print
67 x 100cm
Museum Folkwang, Essen
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Skandalous
2007
From The Cast
C-print
84 x 56cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Jay
2007
From The Cast
C-print
56 x 84cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Untitled
2008
From the series Trona – Armpit of America
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Dirt Field
2008
From the series Trona – Armpit of America
C-print
56 x 84cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Two boys
2008
From the series Trona – Armpit of America
C-print
56 x 84cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Ball 13
2008
From the series Trona – Armpit of America
C-print
84 x 56cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
BMX
2008
From the series Trona – Armpit of America
C-Print
56 x 84cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Vela Azzurra
2010
From the series Vele
C-print
150 x 120cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

With The Fall, Museum Folkwang is presenting the first major overview exhibition of the work of Tobias Zielony (June 25 – September 26, 2021). Zielony stands in a long lineage of artistic photography. His visual world is seen as paving the way for a younger generation. Few photographers have observed developments in society and the media as keenly and translated these into a contemporary visual language as he has. His work The Citizen, on the topic of migration, was shown in the German Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennial and viewed by a broad international public. The largest presentation of his photographs and video works to date offers a comprehensive insight into Zielony’s work of the last 20 years.

The people and spaces that attract Tobias Zielony are not on the margins of society, but the places in deprived areas where adolescents meet, hang out and show off: be this in Wuppertal, Trona, Naples, Osaka, Halle-Neustadt or Kiev. The youths and young adults whom Zielony accompanies with his camera as a confidant and observer belong to the Techno, LGBTQIT* or skater scene, amongst others. Zielony operates globally and allows himself to be guided by his curiosity, which affords him ever new encounters with young people in their respective social contexts. In all of this he explores the intersection between fictional and documentary assertions and investigates the political and aesthetic potential as well as the boundaries of authentic self-representation. His photographic works and films are characterised by a critical understanding of the genre and the quest for self-determination and emancipation of those portrayed in them.

The show The Fall combines well-known photography series and early video works ranging from Curfew (2001), Big Sexyland (2006), the well-known stop-motion videos Vele (2009-2010), Maskirovka (2016-2017), to the video work Hansha (2019) created in Japan. The exhibition is the first to bring together Zielony’s visual worlds from different parts of the world and show them as global phenomena with specific characteristics. A symbolic city space is created in the exhibition;s central space, which offers a space to meet and sojourn. Encounters, situations and places exist alongside and enter into relationship with each other, and in their spatial consolidation cite the ever-present flood of images on social media.

In his work, Tobias Zielony has time and again addressed youth culture with a view to background, representation and fashion and the definition of identity in a world changing in terms of the media used. Social networks and the exchange of photographic images they entail have fundamentally changed the notion of the self and the forms of (self-)representation. Everyone – and this includes his protagonists – now uses the photographic medium with their smart phone in order to send and receive images. In this interplay, Zielony shows his subjects as confident participants acting in a global cosmos of social codes and self-portraits – in spite of cultural and social differences.

Spector Books is publishing a series of essays: selected works by Tobias Zielony are paired with texts by Sophia Eisenhut, Joshua Groß, Dora Koderhold, Enis Maci, Mazlum Nergiz and Jakob Nolte.

Press release from the Museum Folkwang

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Al-Akrab (filmstill)
2014
HD Video & Stop Motion, 4:52 min
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
The Citizen
2015
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Cover
2017
From Maskirovka
Inkjet print
84 x 56cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Secret
2017
From Maskirovka
Inkjet print
56 x 84cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Make Up
2017
From Maskirovka
Inkjet print
70 x 105cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Maskirovka (installation view)
2017
HD Video, Stop Motion, 8:46 min
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Red Mask
2019
Inkjet print
100 x 75cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Hansha (installation view)
2019
HD Video, 6:01 min
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Snakepool
2020
Inkjet print
120 x 80cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Yusuke
2020
Inkjet print
120 x 80cm
Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

Halina Kliem
Portrait of Tobias Zielony
2021

Museum Folkwang
Museumsplatz 1, 45128 Essen

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 6pm
Thursday – Friday 10am – 8pm

Museum Folkwang website

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Exhibition: ‘Lost Places. Sites of Photography’ at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg

Exhibition dates: 8th June – 23rd September 2012

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Dirt Field
2008
From the series Trona – Armpit of America
C-Print
56 x 84cm
Sammlung Halke / Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

“Fredric Jameson wrote that in the postmodern world, the subject is not alienated but fragmented. He explained that the notion of alienation presumes a centralized, unitary self who could become lost to himself or herself. But if, as a postmodernist sees it, the self is decentred and multiple, the concept of alienation breaks down. All that is left is an anxiety of identity. The personal computer culture began with small machines that captured a post-1960s utopian vision of transparent understanding. Today, the personal computer culture’s most compelling objects give people a way to think concretely about an identity crisis. In simulation, identity can be fluid and multiple, a signifier no longer points to a thing that is signified, and understanding is less likely to proceed through analysis than by navigation through virtual space.”

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Sherry Turkle 1

As we navigate these (virtual) worlds a signifier no longer points to a thing that is signified. In other words there is a split between referent and (un)known reality = a severance of meaning and its object.

“The image has nothing to do with signification, meaning, as implied by the existence of the world, the effort of truth, the law and the brightness of the day. Not only is the image of an object not the meaning of that object and of no help in comprehending it, but it tends to withdraw it from its meaning by maintaining it in the immobility of a resemblance that it has nothing to resemble.”2

Such is the case in these photographs. In their isolation each becomes the simulacra, the restaged models that are Thomas Demand’s photographs. That they do not allow any true reference to reality means that they become the image of memory in the present space. As the press release notes, “What happens to real places if a space loses its usual significance and can be experienced on a virtual plane?”

Kenneth Gergen observes, “The current texts of the self are built upon those of preceding eras, and they in turn upon more distant forms of discourse. In the end we have no way of “getting down to the self as it is.” And thus we edge toward the more unsettling question: On what grounds can we assume that beneath the layers of accumulated understandings there is, in fact, an obdurate “self” to be located? The object of understanding has been absorbed into the world of representations.”3

So we return to the split between referent and reality, a severance of meaning and its object in representation itself. These photographs, our Self and our world are becoming artefacts of hyperreality, of unallocated (un/all/located) space in which a unitary self/world has always been “lost.”

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to the Hamburger Kunsthalle for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Beate Gütschow (German, b. 1970)
S#11
2005
Light Jet Print
180 x 232cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle
© Beate Gütschow / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Alexandra Ranner (German, b. 1967)
Schlafzimmer II (Bedroom II)
2008
Installation, Holz, Teppich, Styrodur,  Licht, Farbe
H: 240cm, B: 500cm, L: 960cm
© Alexandra Ranner, Galerie Mathias  Güntner, Hamburg / VG Bild-Kunst, 2012

Sarah Schönfeld (German, b. 1979)
Wende-Gelände 01
2006
C-Print
122 x 150cm
Privatsammlung / Courtesy Galerie  Feldbuschwiesner, Berlin
© Sarah Schönfeld

Guy Tillim (South African, b. 1962)
Apartment Building, Avenue Bagamoyo, Beira, Mozambique
2008
(aus der Serie Avenue Patrice Lumumba)
Pigmentdruck auf Papier, kaschiert auf Aluminium
91.5 x 131.5cm
Guy Tillim / Courtesy Kuckei + Kuckei, Berlin und Stevenson, Cape Town
© Guy Tillim

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Insomnia
1994
Cibachrome in Leuchtkasten (Plexiglas,  Aluminium, Leuchtröhren)
174 x 214cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle
© Jeff Wall

In recent years, photography has reached a new peak in artistic media. Starting with the Düsseldorf School, with artists such as Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff or Candida Höfer, a young generation of artists developed that adopted different approaches by which to present the subject-matter of “space” and “place” in an era of historic change and social crises. With the exhibition Lost Places, the Hamburger Kunsthalle art museum dedicates itself to these new approaches, which document a wide range of different places and living spaces and their increasing isolation through the media of photography, film and installation works.

Joel Sternfeld’s documentary photographs depict places that were crime scenes. Thomas Demand restages real crime scenes, initially as models in order to then photograph them. In turn, in her large-scale photographs, Beate Gütschow constructs cityscapes and landscapes that are reminiscent of well-known places, but that do not allow any true reference. Sarah Schönfeld illustrates “the image of memory in the present space” in her photographs. She visits old places from her GDR childhood and captures these in their present state, whereby both points in time collide. In his fictional video installation Nostalgia, Omer Fast recounts the story of illegal immigrants from three different perspectives.

In his book The collective memory, French philosopher Maurice Halbwachs pointed out the significance of “spatial images” for the memory of social communities. Today the reliable spatial contextualisation of objects and memories (also due to digital photography) is under threat, hence this pretence begins to crumble. What happens to real places if a space loses its usual significance and can be experienced on a virtual plane?

The exhibition comprises about 20 different approaches of contemporary photography and video art with many loans from museums and private collections. The exhibition features the following artists: Thomas Demand (b. 1964), Omer Fast (b. 1972), Beate Gütschow (b. 1970), Andreas Gursky (b. 1955), Candida Höfer (b. 1944), Sabine Hornig (b. 1964), Jan Köchermann (b. 1967), Barbara Probst (b. 1964), Alexandra Ranner (b. 1967), Ben Rivers (b. 1972), Thomas Ruff (b. 1958), Gregor Schneider (b. 1969), Sarah Schönfeld (b. 1979), Joel Sternfeld (b. 1944), Thomas Struth (b. 1954), Guy Tillim (b. 1962), Jörn Vanhöfen (b. 1961), Jeff Wall (b. 1946) and Tobias Zielony (b. 1973).

Press release from the Hamburger Kunsthalle website

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Times Square, New York
2000
C-Print
140.2 x 176.2cm
Courtesy Thomas Struth, Berlin
© Thomas Struth

Jörn Vanhöfen (German, b. 1961)
Asok #797
2010
C-Print auf Aluminium
122 x 147cm
© Jörn Vanhöfen, courtesy: Kuckei + Kuckei,  Berlin

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Haltestelle
2009
C-Print / Diasec
240 x 330cm
Thomas Demand, Berlin
© Thomas Demand / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Parlament
2009
C-Print / Diasec
180 x 223cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie 2010  erworben durch die Stiftung des Vereins der  Freunde der Nationalgalerie für zeitgenössische Kunst
© Thomas Demand / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Vela Azzurra
2010
From the series Vele
C-Print
150 x 120cm
Tobias Zielony / Courtesy und KOW, Berlin und Lia Rumma, Neapel
© Tobias Zielony

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
Sáo Paulo Sé
2002
C-Print, Plexiglas
286 x 206cm
Dauerleihgabe der Stiftung für die  Hamburger Kunstsammlungen
© SHK/Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk/  VG Bild-Kunst, 2012

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
Ohne Titel XIII (Mexico)
2002
Photographie
276 x 206cm
Dauerleihgabe der Stiftung für die  Hamburger Kunstsammlungen
© SHK/Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk/ VG  Bild-Kunst, 2012

Hamburger Kunsthalle
Glockengießerwall 20095
Hamburg
Phone: +49 (0) 40 – 428 131 200

Opening hours:
Tuesdays to Sundays 10am – 6pm
Closed Mondays

Hamburger Kunsthalle website

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