Claus pride

Claus pride

Claus Stolz (born March 16, 1963 in Mannheim ) is a German photo artist . He practices a radical form of analog photography.

Heliography by Claus Stolz, Sonne # 252, 8 × 10 ″ original film, 2016

Heliography by Claus Stolz, Sonne # 220C, 2015

Sun 180A ; Excerpt from slide projection, 2010

life and work

Claus Stolz studied at the Free Art Academy in Mannheim. Stolz has been developing special photo-artistic processes since the mid-1990s.

For his heliographies, Stolz directs permanently mounted recording devices directly into the sun and damages the film material, deliberately but carefully, through extreme overexposure from a few seconds to several hours. The destructive power of the radiant energy causes the film layers to bubble, burst, melt and crystallize on the focal surfaces. This creates smaller cosms of different colors with fine internal drawings. Grotesque monster heads, bizarre grimaces, surreal cell structures appear, but absolutely nothing is depicted. Comparable to the slotted or perforated canvases by Lucio Fontana in the 1960s, the image carrier becomes an image object, a small sculpture, through the focused heat exposure. Time and energy are immediately visible and tangible. The results depend on the type of film used, on the recording and processing modalities. The recordings are exposed with converging lenses up to one meter in diameter on roll and flat film and then, depending on suitability and format, fixed directly in light or acrylic glass boxes or enlarged on photo paper. Claus Stolz projects slide films down to the size of a hall wall.

Photo # 66, Claus Stolz, Photographic Plate, 2019

The works from Stolz's group of works Lichtbilder are photographically reproduced photo plates made of glass, on which the application of the antihalation layer on the back often has a special painterly appearance - which is usually never seen, this water-soluble layer is (correctly) processed. By removing them directly from the pack, Claus Stolz's plates are exposed to light or exposed to light without a camera, making them unusable for their actual purpose - but only visible in their materiality. The plates that Stolz has collected and used are up to 100 years old, and have therefore been stored or preserved for a very long period of time, so that in some places, despite the obviously undamaged packaging, a little light or dust seems to have penetrated. The plates (freshly removed from the pack) are also not free from scratches and similar damage. It is a material-historical, archaeological-aesthetic search for traces.

In the age of digital photography, the works of Claus Stolz occupy a unique position in the history of photography. Stolz lives and works in Mannheim and is a member of the German Society for Photography ( DGPh ).

Solo exhibitions (selection)

2020: Matter is a possibility , Ernst Bloch Center , Ludwigshafen (as part of the OFF / FOTO festival)
2017: VELBUELE , Kunstverein Bellevue-Saal , Wiesbaden (with Myriam Holme)
2016: Solitaire , Photo Room Cologne - GROWING , Art Association Heddesheim
2014: Kunstverein Trier - Galerie Grandel , Mannheim
2013: SUNLICHT , Kulturpalast Wedding International , Berlin
2012: Dark Chocolate , Art Association Viernheim (with Michael Schnabel)
2011: Sunburns , galerie photonet (Kleinschmidt Fine Photographs), Wiesbaden
2010: Photo Edition Berlin
2008: sunburns , gallery photonet, Wiesbaden
2007: bright to cloudy , bang! room for art , Mannheim - Stop and go , Kunstbetrieb Karlsruhe (with Barbara Hindahl)
2004: Künstlerhaus Göttingen
2003: galerie photonet, Wiesbaden
2001: After nature , Artothek Wiesbaden
2000: A place in the sun , Mannheimer Kunstverein
1999: Galerie Fahlbusch , Mannheim
1996: Kunstverein Bad Dürkheim
1995: Landesmuseum Mainz
1993: Gallery in the lamp factory , Mainz
1992: Leimen Art Association

Group exhibitions and trade fair participation (selection)

2019: Kammerspiel , Knut Eckstein, Barbara Hindahl and Claus Stolz, Oberwelt eV, Stuttgart
2018: Anniversary exhibition 10 years Photo Edition Berlin , Photo Edition Berlin
2017: ichduersiees , Delegated Artworks , Kunstverein Ludwigsburg
2016: Concrete and Generative Photography / Part 2 - The Contemporaries Marco Breuer, Richard Caldicott, Inge Dick, Ewald Maurer, Harald Mairböck and Claus Stolz, Photo Edition Berlin - Timelines , Kunstverein Ludwigshafen - Repertoire. Abstract art , Galerie Grandel, Mannheim
2015: Photo and data image - traces of concrete photography , Museum im Kulturspeicher Würzburg - Movement, Energy and Presence - a Challenged Perception , Sylvia Ballhause, Jürgen Hatzenbühler and Claus Stolz, photography, Galerie Grandel, Mannheim - Raw Exposure. Photographic works with (inorganic) organic and mechanical processes , Edgar Lissel (AT), Harald Mairböck (AT), Claus Stolz (D) and Jiri Sigut (CZ), Photo Edition Berlin, - fotofever , Paris, France - On the Sublime - Artists of the Gallery , Karl Hugo Schmölz, Michael Schnabel, Claus Stolz. Kleinschmidt Fine Photographs, Wiesbaden
2014: Kunstverein Germersheim - One gram of light. Old processes in young photographic images , Museum for Industrial Culture, Nuremberg
2013: ART13 London, GB - Prague Photo Festival, Czech Republic - artist of the gallery and guests , Photo Edition Berlin - The Art of Photography Show , The San Diego Art Institute, USA
2012: Group Show , Photo Edition Berlin - Les Rencontres d'Arles 2012, Arles, France - St'art 2012 , Burg Collection, Strasbourg, France
2011: Art Karlsruhe - Biel Photo Days 2011, Switzerland - Wolfgang Reindel and students, a retrospective, Kunstverein Germersheim
2009: Show me yours , Municipal Gallery Bydgoszcz, Poland - Art Karlsruhe
2008: Art Karlsruhe - Art Cologne - Hong Kong International Art Fair - KIAF Seoul Photo Edition Berlin - Lianzhou International Photo Festival, China
2006: Cologne Fine Art - Wunder der Prärie , International Festival for Theater, Performance, Dance, Art
2005: 7th International Photo Days Mannheim / Ludwigshafen, Month of Photography in the Rhine-Neckar Triangle - Art Bodensee, Dornbirn
2003–2005: KunstKöln - Art Frankfurt
2002: Art Frankfurt
2001: 20 years of the Leimen Art Association, anniversary exhibition
1998: Exhibition for the Palatinate Prize for Fine Art 1998, Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern - Parallels, contemporary art and archeology in dialogue , Reiss Museum Mannheim
1994: The Forest , Leimen Art Association

Monographs

Claus Stolz: SUNBURNS , ed. v. Klaus Kleinschmidt, Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg, 2009, ISBN 978-3-86828-066-1
Claus Stolz , exhibition catalog, ed. v. Martin Stather, Mannheimer Kunstverein, 2000

Publications

Sun Series - Claus Stolz , Reset the Apparatus !, University of Applied Arts Vienna, 2018
Wolfgang Neumann, Kunstverein Ludwigsburg: Ichduersiees, delegated artworks , 2017
Damian Zimmermann: The radical light burner in: PhotoKlassik, issue 1.2017
Photo Edition Berlin: Concrete and Generative Photography, Part II , 2016
Sarah-Denise Neven, Heliografien , interView Magazin, October 14, 2016
Claus Stolz in SPOTLIGHT - Twenty Years of the Biel / Bienne Festival of Photography, 2016
Photograph and data image: traces of concrete photography , exhibition cat. Museum im Kulturspeicher Würzburg, ed. Henrike Holsing and Gottfried Jäger, 2015
Christoph Schaden. Claus Stolz Heliographies, in: One gram of light , exhibition cat. Museums of the City of Nuremberg, ed. by Ingrid Bierer and Matthias Murko, Michael Imhof Verlag, 2014
HEIST-online Microscopic - Claus Stolz, 2014
contra doc! Issue 2, 2014 Claus Stolz. Heliographs
LensCulture Claus Stolz Heliographs , 2014
F-STOP Magazine , issue 58, 2013
PhotoKlassik , Issue 1, 2013
Der Greif , Issue 6, 2012
Rebekka Schraner: Claus Stolz. Sunburns . In: Biel Photo Days 2011 , exhibition cat., Benteli Verlag Bern, Switzerland, 2011
Claus pride. The Sun . In: uyw photography magazine , issue 14, ed. by Heidi Romano and Claudio Severo, Melbourne 2011
Bernd Böhlendorf: Zen of Photography . In: Bang! room for art , exhibition catalog, Mannheim 2008/2009
Michael Stoeber: Claus Stolz. Clear to cloudy . In: Bang! room for art , exhibition catalog, Mannheim 2006/2007
Thomas Schirmböck: Claus Stolz. Minutes: seconds . In: 7th International Photo Days Mannheim / Ludwigshafen , Month of Photography in the Rhine-Neckar Triangle, exhib.-cat., Ed. v. The BildForum e. V., Mannheim 2005
In the green . Photographic work by Claus Stolz, exhib.-cat., Ed. v. Martin Stather, Mannheimer Kunstverein 2000
Christmut Präger: picture, writing, typeface , in: Atelier & Künstler , Vol. 3, Rhein-Neckar-Kreis 1994