Kurt Buchwald

Kurt Buchwald (* 1953 in Wittenberg ) is a German photographer and artist .

Life

Kurt Buchwald attended the polytechnic high school in Lutherstadt Wittenberg and graduated from high school in 1974 with vocational training as a maintenance mechanic in the VEB nitrogen works Piesteritz. He then studied from 1976 to 1981 at the Technical University of Karl-Marx-Stadt (today Chemnitz ) with a degree in polygraphic technology. At the same time, in 1980 he graduated from the special school for directors of artistic folk creation, specializing in photography, at the district culture academy under the direction of Ralf-Rainer Wasse.

During his studies Kurt Buchwald came into contact with the Chemnitz art scene ( Klaus-Hähner Springmühl ), which, under the influence of the artist group Clara Mosch, represented non-conformist positions in the GDR. In 1979 he carried out his first artistically oriented photo projects and campaigns and, after moving to Berlin in 1982, began to deal with conceptual photography. Up until 1989, Buchwald's works mainly reached a small, alternative audience. In the context of the official art doctrine of Socialist Realism, his art actions and works irritated functionaries and the public alike. His photographic explorations challenged the dominance of social documentary photography in the GDR.

In 1986 Buchwald was accepted into the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR with the photo project Asphalt & Arbeit . Since then he has been working as a freelancer. At the time of political change, Buchwald was a master class student with Lothar Reher at the Berlin Academy of the Arts from 1989 to 1991.

In 1993 Kurt Buchwald was accepted into the German Society for Photography (DGPH). In 2000 he was appointed to the German Photographic Academy (DFA) and he became a member of the Professional Association of Visual Artists Berlin (bbk belin eV). In 2005 he received his Master of Art, at the Institute: Art in Context, Berlin University of the Arts, and worked on projects and workshops on cultural education in Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt until 2016.

plant

In his work, Kurt Buchwald deals with questions of perception, the creation of images and the influence of the media in performances , documentations, conceptual works , photo series, snapshots and individual shots as well as texts. It is important to him that original aesthetic concepts emerge from the medium of photography, which combine with the zeitgeist. Buchwald makes photography speak about itself or uses it to reflect on the world. He is a border crosser who unfolds a broad range of artistic creativity.

In his early work, he used methods of automatic writing as well as montage and collage. With actions (from 1979) his artistic work got a new dimension. The actionistic was not always directly visible, but the performative, the apparatus ( Vilém Flusser ) and the consequences that followed played a major role for him. In 1982 he generated interference images with a television set and then burned the device. This was the beginning of the confrontation with disturbed vision and alienation from the modern world. The Dadaism model of uncertainty, experimentation and play became the engine of his artistic work. In 1984 he blocked the camera view with his own body. After the “Stehbilder-Störbilder” campaign on Alexanderplatz in Berlin in 1984 (“The photographer stands between the image and the world”), the tableau “A day in East Berlin” was created in 1986. In 1989, Buchwald banned photography with his campaign “Photography forbidden!” the world clock at Alexanderplatz on the 150th anniversary of photography. What appeared in the GDR as an attack on the state's monopoly of power was intended as an antithesis to the flood of images. Buchwald continued the “Photography prohibited!” Campaign worldwide until 2005.

As one of the few East German artists, he took up approaches from conceptual art as early as the 1980s . These included the actions “Finding-Photographing-Taking possession-Carrying away” and “Driving-Photographing-Driving” (1985). From the latter he developed a new picture idea for the series "Landscape & Movement" 1985/86. In 1989, the “Running-Photographing-Running” campaign resulted in the video performance “Photographing-Photographing”. Buchwald also approached the subject in a conceptual manner in the project “Asphalt & Work” (1985/86). He fragmented the events, played with the sharpness-unsharp relation, puzzled subjects and dissolved the pictorial space. Then he showed tools and traces, portraits of the workers and brought the different views together in a 12-part picture tableau. The photo series represented a novelty in artistic photography in the GDR, as it broke the framework of social documentary photography. A form of presentation typical for him began with the picture tableau, which is used either heterogeneously to depict a topic or a situation (“a film on the surface”). In the 1990s, numerous tableaus were created in a narrative (“Heil Deutschland”) or experimental (project “Bilder + Blenden”).

At the turn of the year 1989/1991 Buchwald occupied himself with performances such as: "The great cleansing, behind great men ..." (Stalin action with Joerg Waehner ).

In 1993 Buchwald founded the art project "Office for Perception Disorders (AFW)" which published absurd bans, orders and pseudo-scientific representations. With the AFW, Buchwald processed the transformation time after the fall of the Wall in East Germany and anticipated developments in fake news and new artistic strategies in the Center for Political Beauty .

This was followed by the performative project “Die Rohrmenschen” (2003–2009). The artist himself, but also other people, tried out the "tunnel vision" and put on a tube that could be understood as a lens and produced excerpts of reality as they are constitutive in photography.

From the interfering image principle of the 1980s, Buchwald developed the project “Images + Blends” (1990–2000). He replaced the body action with a black disk with a hole, gap or grid that he attached to the camera. The viewer had to add to the still visible fragments of the city or landscape. In addition, experimental portraits were created on the border between figuration and abstraction.

In 1991 Buchwald began with color photography, working with colored discs and constructing man-high objects made of steel ("perception instruments") that made the interference principle possible even without a camera. For the “Stripes” series (2000), Buchwald built an experimental arrangement with stripe diaphragms, generated interference images and left the representational.

He continues his experiments on perception with the series in “Circle of Perception” (2001–2006), “Im Kasten” (2012) and “Magic Triangle” (2019). Now he replaced the cover with a tube and placed it on a surface. This created a geometrically defined dark room with a reduced "light-in-fall".

Works by Kurt Buchwald can be found in many international collections and museums: Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden, German Historical Museum, Photographic Collection of the City Museum Berlin, Artothek of the Social Promotion of Artists, Berlin Gallery, State Museum for Modern Art, Photography and Architecture, Berlin. State Gallery Moritzburg, Halle, Brandenburg State Museum for Modern Art Frankfurt (Oder) and Cottbus, Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi (Belgium), Museum for Applied Arts, Gera, Art Museum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, Magdeburg, University Collections Art + Technology, Dresden, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, Beeskow Art Archive and owned by private collectors in Germany, France and the USA.

Scholarships

1991 Working grant from the Kulturfonds foundation
1992 work grant from the Berlin Senate,
1993 artist at the David Gallery, Bielefeld from 1993–2011
1998 scholarship at Wiepersdorf Castle
1999 Barkenhoff scholarship in Worpswede
2000 Scholarship Kunstverein Röderhof e. V.
2001 scholarship at the Berlin Academy of the Arts in Olevano / Italy
2004 Cranach Foundation Wittenberg grant

Solo exhibitions (selection)

1985 Berlin, Kreiskulturhaus Treptow, transport attempts
1992 Cottbus, Brandenburg Art Collection: Pictures + Apertures
1994 Paris, Bouquert + Lebon Gallery: La Photographie Empecheé
1994 Berlin, NGBK, Haus am Kleistpark: Pictures + screens
1996 Museé de la Photography á Charlervoi
2002 Magdeburg, Art Museum, Monastery of Our Dear Women: Interferences
2012 Berlin, Schillerpalais: Paths to the Image
2014 Berlin, PHOTO EDITION BERLIN: view intent
2016 Berlin, PHOTO EDITION BERLIN: Zero o'clock
2017 Berlin, gallery in the side wing: LICHT-EIN-FALL
2018 Berlin, Galerie Pankow: Limes Mundi
2019 Chemnitz, Neue Sächsische Galerie: Reversing the view

Group exhibitions (selection)

1990 Paris, La Villette: L'autre Allemagne hors les murs
1990 Bradford, National Museum of Photography: Photography in the GDR
1990 Arles, Maison de la Roquette, Rencontres d'Arles: Esprit des lieux
1990 Munich, Praterinsel: Young photographers from the GDR
1991 Reims, Comédie de Reims, Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Art, Evreux, Musée d 'Evreux: Surgence
1992 Berlin / Graz, "Art-Heimat-Kunst" steirischer herbst'92
1992 Carlisle, Tyllie House, turing points
1993 Berlin, NGBK: About the big cities
1993 Frankfurt, German Photo Days: Photography of the 90s
1996 Berlin, Reservoir II, interdisciplinary art project on the river
1996 Berlin, Haus am Kleistpark, Schöneberg Art Office: Quadrature I
1997 Troisdorf, Kultursekretariat Gütersloh: STAD (t) -ART,
1997 Berlin, German Historical Museum: Dictatorship and Boheme
1998 Erfurt, Galerie am Fischmarkt: Signatures of the Visible
1998 Cottbus, Brandenburg Art Collection: Borderline Cases
1999 Berlin, Willy-Brand-Haus: Pictures of Germany II
1999 Gera, Museum of Modern Art, Anne Biermann Prize
1999 Bielefeld, Galerie David: Photo works (with Bosse, Grünewald and Reeb)
2000 Maison de la Culture de Namur, Namur (Belgium): Rien à voir
2000 Potsdam, gallery in the old town hall: painting with light and pixels
2000 Bielefeld, Galerie David: Flower-screen structures (with Jaquet and Comeriner), within the symposium "Abstract Photography"
2000 Bremen KUBO Art Prize, City Gallery Bremen: Opposite
2001 Berlin + Cologne, NGBK and Galerie Schüppenhauer: ex machina
2002 Klodzko, Poland, Galeria Sztuki: Wielolinie
2003 Cottbus, Brandenburg Art Collections: Landscape of Remembrance
2005 Berlin, media gallery, Retted the wealth
2006 Berlin, Friedrichshain photo gallery: see yourself
2007 Frankfurt / Oder, Museum Junge Kunst: Objects and sculptures from the collection
2009 Berlin, Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz: Transitional Society
2009 Berlin, DZ Bank art collection: I think of Germany ...
2010 Slubice and Frankfurt / Oder, Galerie Okno, Festival of New Art "LABIRYNT"
2012 Plein air in Zella-Mehlis, gallery in the community center: "The modern after the modern ..."
2012 Berlin, studio im hochaus: "DIALOG" with S. Ahrend, M. Pozniak and J. Olek
2012 Berlin, Berlinische Galerie, Museum of Modern Art: "Closed Society"
2012 Berlin, Galerie Alte Schule: "LICHTFANG - FOTO / GRAPHIE" and "POMME FRITZ"
2013 Halle, Moritzburg Foundation, State Art Museum: "Encounter of Images"
2014 Berlin, Neukölln lighthouse: Well-built pictures with Artner, Gallmeier, Mauss u. will
2016 Berlin, ZKR - Center for Art and Public Space Schloss Biesdorf: Landscape commissioned
2016 Berlin, Künstlerhaus Bethanien: End of the story
2017 Berlin, Berlinische, Galerie, Museum of Contemporary Art: The photographed distance
2017 Potsdam, Museum BABERINI: Behind the Mask, Artists in the GDR
2017 Leipzig, Kunsthalle der Sparkasse Leipzig, VON (AB) WESENHEITEN
2018 Berlin, Haus am Kleistpark, Dresden, riesa efau: In another country - transformations
2018 Frankfurt / Oder, Brandenburg State Museum for Modern Art: Blick / Wendungen
2018 Newcastle, SIDE Gallery-Amber: The Inner Eye - Aspects of GDR Documentary Photography
2019 Cologne, Basement Studios Cologne: HIGH FIVE, Photoszene Cologne 2019
2019 Rostock, Kunsthalle: Palace of the Republic - utopia, inspiration, politics
2019 Recontres d'Arles: LES LIBERTÉS INTÉRIEURES, Photography Est-Allemande
2019 Leipzig, Museum of Fine Arts: Point of No Return

Publications (selection)

In the years from 1987 to 1994 Uwe Warnke and Kurt Buchwald published five special editions of the artist magazine Entweder / Oder on contemporary photography. Around 1987 Buchwald published a "Statement on Conceptual Photography".

Photography in action, editor: Gunhild Brandler. With texts by Piotr Olszowka, Stefan Wendel, Gunhild Brandler, Kurt Buchwald I

1994 Bilder + Blenden, publisher: NGBK for the exhibition in the house in Kleistpark 1994. With texts by Christoph Tannert, Kurt Buchwald and Thilo König

2002 Interference, publisher: Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, text by Gottfried Jäger, Magdeburg 2002

2016 Visual intent, editors: Gunther Dietrich, Tomás Rodriguez Soto, with texts by Christoph Tannert and Uwe Warnke , Photo Edition Berlin, Berlin 2016

2018 Limes Mundi, the reversal of view, publisher: Galerie Pankow, Berlin / Neue Sächsische Galerie. With texts by Eckhart Gillen, Bernd Rosner and Kurt Buchwald. Chemnitz 2018

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Buchwald, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH	1953
PLACE OF BIRTH	Wittenberg