Matthias Herrmann is the author of photographic self-portraits that are on the sharp border between extreme erotic fantasy and aesthetic transgression. His works are perfect examples of a soft oscillation between the area of intimacy (private, inner) and exposure (outer, public). The book with its 128 photographs – hyper-aesthetic images of the beauty of male’s body, sometimes almost offensive with their overdone homoeroticism – reveals the artist’s unusual sense of humour and his ironical distance. The exhibitionism in Herrmanns Oeuvre allows a deep analysis of a subject, that is situated somewhere between melancholy and loneliness, pleasure and emotional alienation. “Irony, identity and abstraction are essential aspects of my works” says the artist. “I’m particularly interested in the moments when we are able to let ourselves free, for a short moment, from the role we are expected to enact and find ourselves in a comical and absurd situation when we wouldn’t like anyone to see us. A sort of a improperness.”

Matthias Herrmann, *1963 in Munich, Germany. Lives and works in Vienna, Austria.