Michael Wesely

Michael Wesely (* 1963 in Munich , lives and works in Berlin ) is a German photographer who has attracted particular attention with his extreme long exposures and self-made cameras ( pinhole cameras ). He is married to the Brazilian artist Lina Kim (* 1965).

Works

With its extreme long exposures, Wesely has found its own way of depicting change. The "intermediate stage", in which the motif lingers longest, has the largest share in the picture. Among other things, impressive studies of the development of tulips in a vase to wither or the construction or demolition of entire buildings have been achieved. On Potsdamer Platz , for example, he documented the construction work on the DaimlerChrysler site with exposure times of up to 26 months. The photographic registration of a long period of time with a plate camera, sometimes for years, creates a timeless picture of reality, "makes time as the medium of disappearance as well as the disappearance of linear time itself visible."

Between 2001 and 2004 Michael Wesely photographed the process of renovating the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the Casa de Vidro in São Paulo, he then followed the change in nature in the changing light conditions for a year.

Michael Wesely and Lina Kim's photos of Brasília were taken between 2003 and 2010, each exposed from sunrise to sunset. In addition, they evaluated historical, also previously unpublished images from various city and newspaper archives in the Brazilian capital, which was inaugurated in 1960 and built on a previously completely free landscape. Wesely and Kim showed around 300 prints documenting the construction process in exhibitions in Kiel and Ulm . They published 1,500 of these photos, which they had created between 1958 and 1964 and which they had reconstructed in color, in an illustrated book published in Brazil.

In 2018 he staged furniture designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1932 for the Landhaus Lemke in Berlin-Weißensee for the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin . The series is called Doubleday . Michael Wesely has merged historical photographs of the interior of Haus Lemke with current photos of the house to create a picture in which space and time as well as various lighting moods from then and now merge.

Michael Wesely was a member of the German Association of Artists . His works can be found, for example, in the Museum of Modern Art in New York , the Kunstmuseum Bonn and the State Painting Collection of Modern Art in Munich.

Career (selection)

• 1986–88 Bavarian State School for Photography, Munich
• 1988, 90 Summer Academy for Fine Arts Salzburg.
• 1990 Solo exhibition of pinhole camera portraits
• 1992 solo exhibition Salzburg 1990
• 1992 1st Ronneburg Symposium of Fine Artists
• 1994 Solo exhibitions Reisezeit , Camera obscura
• 1995 43rd exhibition of the German Association of Artists, Bundeskunsthalle , Bonn
• 1995 Prize for Photography from the City of Munich
• 1988–94 studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich
• 1995 DAAD scholarship for Holland, sponsorship award from the city of Munich
• 1996 Working grant from the Art Fund Foundation , Bonn
• 1999 USA scholarship from the Free State of Bavaria
• 2002 Participation in the 25th São Paulo Biennale
• 2003 Start of joint projects with Lina Kim
• 2004 Open Shutter , Museum of Modern Art , New York
• 2005 New acquisitions by the National Gallery , Hamburger Bahnhof , Berlin
• 2005 Arquivo Brasília , Havana Biennale, Cuba (with Lina Kim)
• 2005 Arquivo Brasília , Teatro Nacional, Brasília (with Lina Kim)
• 2007 Still life , Gemeentemuseum The Hague
• 2008 Lead Award Bronze in the category "Architecture and Still Life Photography of the Year" with Süddeutscher Zeitung Magazin for "How time flies", # 17/2007
• 2010 Time Works , Galerie Nusser & Baumgart , Munich
• 2011 Archive Utopia , Kunsthalle Kiel (with Lina Kim)
• 2012 Brasília , Stadthaus Ulm (with Lina Kim)
• 2014 The Epic View , Mies van der Rohe Haus , Berlin
• 2015 Long-term recordings / construction of the Humboldt Forum , Bertelsmann representative office, Berlin
• 2016 Goethe-Institut Mexico: Year of Germany in Mexico . Michael Wesely represented together with Candida Höfer , Anja Jensen , Hans Peter Kuhn and Gregor Schneider the field of contemporary visual arts in Germany
• 2018 From house to house - furniture, movables and possibilities. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin with the photo series Doubleday by Michael Wesely
• 2019 The Camera was present. Grisebach Düsseldorf
• 2019 No Photos on the Dance Floor! Berlin 1989 - Today. Group exhibition at C / O Berlin to document the Berlin club scene since the fall of the Berlin Wall
• 2019 1: 100 Past and Present. Mies van der Rohe Pavilion Barcelona

Publications (excerpt)

• American Landscape , Storms, 2000. ISBN 3-927533-26-2 .
• New York 1995: Vertical (with Martina Fuchs), Storms, 1996. ISBN 3-927533-14-9 .
• Small excursion , Kunstverein Rosenheim, 2003. ISBN 3-9808555-7-0 .
• Open Shutter Project , The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2004. ISBN 0-87070-682-9 .
• East Germany , Verlag Walther König, 2004. ISBN 3-88375-849-3 .
• The invention of the invisible , Fotohof edition , 2005. ISBN 3-901756-55-8 .
• Still life 2001–2007 , Schirmer / Mosel, 2007. ISBN 978-3-8296-0305-8 .
• Time Works , Schirmer / Mosel, 2010. ISBN 978-3-8296-0513-7 .
• Lina Kim / Michael Wesely: Arquivo Brasília. Cosac Naify, São Paulo 2010 (en) ISBN 978-85-7503-924-3
• Anette Hüsch (Ed.): Archive Utopia. The Brasília project by Lina Kim and Michael Wesely . Kehrer, Heidelberg Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86828-221-4 (German-English)
• Association of Friends and Supporters of the Mies van der Rohe House eV: Michael Wesely. The Epic View . Form + Zweck, Berlin 2015. (companion volume to the exhibition)

Web links

• Literature by and about Michael Wesely in the catalog of the German National Library
• Michael Wesely's website
• Works by Michael Wesely at Fahnemann Projects , Berlin
• Works by Michael Wesely at Nusser & Baumgart , Munich

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Open Shutter Project 2001 - 2004. Website of M. Wesely ( Memento from January 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
2. ^ Archive Utopia: The Brasília Project in the Kiel Art Gallery. In: The Albrecht. May 25, 2011. Retrieved August 12, 2017 . 
3. ↑ Lina Kim and Michael Wesely: Brasilia. Stadthaus Ulm, accessed on August 12, 2017 . 
4. ^ Full members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903 / Wesely, Michael. Deutscher Künstlerbund, accessed on April 11, 2017.
5. ↑ Wesely's work at the Museum of Modern Art (English, accessed on May 1, 2012).
6. ↑ Sharp look. The German Association of Artists in Bonn 1995. 43rd annual exhibition. Deutscher Künstlerbund, accessed on May 1, 2019.
7. ↑ Exhibitions 2014. Mies van der Rohe Haus, accessed on August 12, 2017 . 
8. ^ Michael Wesely exhibition at Bertelsmann. Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, accessed on August 12, 2017 . 
9. ^ Year of Germany in Mexico. Schattenblick, accessed August 12, 2017 . 
10. ^ Photography as letting go: Conversation with Michael Wesely - Fotolot. Pearl divers , accessed April 6, 2019 . 
11. ↑ Long exposures: Michael Wesely in the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion. September 27, 2019, accessed on October 1, 2019 (German).