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Elmar Hess (GER)

Exhibition: 5 – 22 November 2016
Address: WHITECONCEPTS . Auguststrasse 35 . 10119 Berlin
Opening hours: Mon – Fri 10:00 – 17:00 and by appointment

Creating an image of a surreal-fictional world, the German artist Elmar Hess makes a distinctive contribution to the progress of the filmic medium in visual arts.

Through the combination of found footage and reenactments, he seeks to remove the classic mode of the functioning of film. His work includes film and video works as well as multimedia installations consisting of thematically interlinked rooms. They provide a chapter structure comparable to the dramaturgical sequence of a film.

The exhibition focuses on videos, photographs and objects from Hess’ installation “La Mère Perdue”. The starting point is a historical event: The portrait of the “Mona Lisa” was shipped to an exhibition in the USA in 1962 – aboard the ocean liner SS “France”. In Hess’ installation the event is related to an autobiographical experience of the artist, an encounter with the “France”, decades later. The personal significance of the defining moment is reflected on the general cultural value of the “Mona Lisa” and to the extent to which values and cultural meanings are objectifying.

“The equating of the Mona Lisa and the child’s model kit of the France gets to the provocative core of this relationship: on the one hand, the life-shaping, subjective significance of a lonely birthday party, and, on the other, the cultural, seemingly objectified value of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Already heading toward its demise, the France links both of these things together, transforming it here into a real and symbolic transporter of general cultural values as well as an autobiographical, private experience. (…)” Stephan Berg in: Elmar Hess, DISTANZ-Verlag, Berlin.

In addition to “La Mère Perdue”, the exhibition “Previous” presents a selection of Hess’ latest work “Einen Frieden später”, which was shown at the Kunsthalle Rostock in summer 2016, as well as of his film debut “Kriegsjahre – War Years” from1996.

Elmar Hess (* 1966) lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg. His works were shown in numerous exhibitions p.e. “Man Son” (Hamburger Kunsthalle; Villa Merkel, Esslingen) as well as “German Open” (Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg), “Surfing Systems” (Kunstverein Kassel), “Lost Paradise” Kunstraum Wien-Museumsquartier), “La Mère Perdue” (Europäisches Kulturforum, Berlin). Hess was a scholarship to the Villa Massimo in Rome and the German Kunstfonds. His films have been shown across Europe, among others at the Moscow Film Festival, the International Film Festival Oberhausen, and the documentary film festival in Cannes.

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