The rhythmograms by Heinrich Heidersberger (1906–2006) are intricately curved compositions of pure light that weave abstract figures, organisms, and spaces. The artist created these complex light patterns during the fifties and sixties, capturing the invisible and elusive worlds of time and motion in a single frame. He drew the rhythmograms using an enormous deconstructed photographic machine of his own design. Outfitted not with a camera but instead with an ingenious, room-sized mechanical apparatus to trace the geometry of delicate waves and oscillations, the machine reproduced the elegant orbit of a single ray of light on a photographic plate. Widely known as an architectural photographer of postwar modernism, Heidersberger’s little-known rhythmograms comprise a fascinating bridge between the work of early modernists and the future of algorithmic art and architecture. This is the first critical study of his rhythmograms in all of their delicate detail.

Hans Köning takes everyday pictures out of the limitations of the autobiographical. He creates linocuts printed only in black-and-white from private and found photographs; the pre-photographic quality of these is an appropriation of the original snapshots.
The artist wants to understand what memory means, why certain images evoke something in us and produce that wonderful feeling of “let this moment last”. Or why other images – in a moment of recognition – bring back terrible memories Könings is a treasure hunter. He finds treasures for us in the depths of the past.

For a decade now, Eva Schwab has been examining her own life story in her painting. Researching and investigating stereotypical scenes from her private photo album has elicited visual mementos that she transfers to a wax-impregnated, transparent canvas, expanding and dissecting the image in an attempt to consciously shape the past using pictures that are part of a collective biography. Since 2005, Schwab has also been examining other biographies, weaving photographic material belonging to ‘adopted kin’ with her own memories. In this way, new ‘family members’ are integrated into the family album, interfaces are examined and points of contact are established, resulting in an intimate and nerve cell-like family album whose branches are nurtured by collected biographies, quotes, authentic and fictitious memories, confabulations and repetitions.

Claus Brunsmann’s work oscillates between figurative and abstract art and covers a broad range of form and content. The paintings are characterised by a multi-layered penetration of the medium and its tradition and are deeply rooted in the history of art. At the same time, they open up traditional imagery to unfamiliar interpretations and ways of seeing modern media.

Claus Brunsmann’s works testify to the power of a painting, which aesthetically manufactures, or even invents, the reality in the image. The series of works presented here, all of which were produced between 2001 and 2012 provide for the first time ever a solid panorama of his oeuvre.

The Dutch artist Hans Könings uses found photographic material as a point of departure for his working process. For Berliner Männer (Berlin Men) he has digitally scanned photos only of men hailing from or found in Berlin and enlarged them on his computer to almost life size. From these microscopically detailed versions of the materials, Könings makes drawings that are once again photographed and scanned, enlarged and worked over using all the methods of digital image production. With this, the processing of the source materials is being brought from second to third generation technology: Hans Könings makes linoleum cuts that, printed on pure black and white, assume the pre-photographic quality of the original snap shots and lend them a very personal signature.

www.hanskonings.com
www.winnertext.de

»The exploration of one’s own roots is in itself a creative undertaking. Its motive and its goal is the idea – both a promise and a risk – of reinventing oneself, of taking on a new identity, a new legend: of reweaving the material of the past anew in order to build oneself a new home for the future.« (Edith Winner)