The Galerie Nordenhake is located in Berlin’s Galerienhaus on Lindenstrasse along with eleven other contemporary art galleries. Also based in Stockholm, the gallery exhibits sculpture, installations, video, painting and photography.
The current exhibition features large-format photographs by Italian artist Walter Niedermayr (b. Bolzano, 1952), along with a series of three videos, White Rush (2010), GoPro (2013) and 25 Nations (2013). All the work on view was produced in the past four years.
The set of pictures is white as snow. Niedermayr has photographed alpine landscapes across the world since the end of the 1980s. These seven photographs were shot in the Alps and printed on two, three or four separate panels (mounted on dibond and framed). A large panel depicting winter sports is also on display, from downhill skiing to glacier hiking.
The men in the photographs are dwarfed by the immense snowy surfaces. The scale seems so unreal that one might think these were drawings on white paper or photographed models. In the videos, especially, which film mountain bike races bordering on the absurd, we realize to what extent man is an intrusion upon this natural space, somewhere he doesn’t belong.
Niedermayr’s work has always explored the interaction between man and his surroundings, specifically in cases where he takes it over and changes it without considering the consequences of his actions. Here Niedermayr insists that man’s involvement with a place only extends to how suitable it is for his activities.
This is the fourth exhibition from Walter Niedermayr at the Galerie Nordenhake in Berlin. His work has appeared in several recently published monographs, including The Aspen Series (2013), Appearances (2011) andRecollection (2010).
Walter Niedermayr
Oberflächen
Until March 8, 2014
Galerie Nordenhake
Lindenstrasse
34
10969 Berlin
