The artist Michael Wesely, born in Munich in 1963, is showing three work cycles from the last 10 years at the FOTOHOF. Starting with his “Palazzi di Roma” from 1995, the arc spans over the “East German Landscapes” (2002 – 2004) to his recently exhibited work “Open “Shutter” at MoMA New York, which depicts the 2-year renovation of the museum in a single image.
Since the beginning of his photographic career, the Berlin-based artist has focused on the analysis of the photographic process of representation, whereby the interplay between the image and its photographic representation is at the centre of his interest. The apparatus – conditioned by its variously (self-)constructed use – makes the “visible invisible” and refers to Wesely’s interest in the photographic process and its perception.
Replacing the lens of the large-format camera with vertical and horizontal slit shutters transforms the Roman palaces, as well as the East German landscapes, into abstract murals reminiscent of painting. Wesely achieves a phenomenon of inscribing time into the photographic process by extremely stretching the exposure time in his work on the renovation of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. With an exposure time of more than 2 years, the much-invoked moment in photography is stretched to infinity and, as it were, anticipates the history of time. In this way, the artist succeeds in creating haunting images that on the one hand follow the scientific laws of the photographic process, but on the other hand are not averse to an aesthetic game of chance.