Through 14 September 2014, the Städtische Galerie Dresden is featuring the Berlin-based photographer Stefan Heyne, one of the most important protagonists of new abstract photography. “NAKED LIGHT. Exposing Infinity” shows 30 of Heyne’s works. The exhibition also includes the artist’s first-ever large-scale architectural installation, commissioned by the Städtische Galerie Dresden.
The walk-in installation The Enlightenment (13 x 7 m) expands the dissolution of space and the disappearance of objective reality conveyed by Stefan Heyne’s photographs. The Enlightenment is integrated into the exhibition space, creating a seamless transition between both “spheres” — the pictorial space and the exhibition space, between the installation in the center of the room and the classical presentation of the works on the outside. Visitors can enter the work to become part of an “unpredictable” universe. The photographic medium is distilled into light and darkness, confronting the viewer with infinity. A paradigm shift is occurring in fine art photography, from the documentary and representational to a new abstraction that radically questions the medium. With his resolutely blurred photographs, Stefan Heyne is positioned at the crux of this contextual and aesthetic renunciation of apparatus-led seeing in favor of a nonrepresentational perceiving of the world. He has succeeded in creating a photography that goes beyond pictorial representation.
In search of the observational parameters for the perception of images, Stefan Heyne questions the basic principles of photography: sharpness and recognizability. By leaving these parameters out of the image content, he breaks with conventional ways of seeing. In his large-format works his motifs – mainly landscapes, everyday objects, and interiors – are liberated from their original form. Extreme abstraction renders the motif unidentifiable. The context of the actual shooting likewise loses any significance.
In his most recent photographs from the series “SEAT” which will be presented for the first time, Stefan Heyne inverted this principle. Photographing the twilight stratosphere from an airplane window, he left his lens fully in focus. Through the absence of all contours, infinity reveals itself to the viewer, finding articulation in the blurriness.
