Ralf Brueck

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Ralf Brueck

Ralf Brueck (* 1966 in Düsseldorf - Pempelfort ) is a German photo artist . It emerged from the Düsseldorf Photo School , but has evolved from it.

Life

Ralf Brueck, who is connected to his homeland, grew up - as he says - in the Pempelfort district of Düsseldorf, which is threatened by gentrification and is actually socially "mixed". He studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1995 to 2002 , initially in Bernd Becher's photography class, and was one of the last students of Bernd and Hilla Becher , the "chroniclers of industrial architecture ". In 2000, when the Bechers class was without a professor , Brueck switched to Thomas Ruff , who had just come to the academy and had been trained by the Bechers himself, and found it exciting to go to someone who was not yet associated with any particular orientation and might come up with completely new ideas. Brueck was from 2002 whose master student , and Ruff showed him the importance of individual artistic attitude on what has since Brücks top premise is. In 2003 he completed his studies in Düsseldorf with a diploma (" Akademiebrief "). Afterwards, Brueck received the Villa Romana grant and lived in Florence for twelve months . Between 2005 and 2011 several stays abroad followed in Europe , Asia and the USA . Ralf Brueck has toured the USA twice, for months and across country.

In addition to his Düsseldorf teachers, his role models now also include American photographers of so-called "New Color Photography" such as William Eggleston and Stephen Shore . His own work was initially related to the Düsseldorf Photo School and the American New Topographic Movement , but his engagement with the American photography scene made him realize that its representatives work much more freely than Brueck had been able to do at the Düsseldorf Photo School. The artist said: "I just wanted to expand the limits of the concept of photography as it applies to me [...]." He succeeded in doing this by starting to use modern image processing techniques. In this way, the scanned analog recording is processed further and further with various tools and fed to its optical destination. “These tools,” explained Brueck in the interview, “are just like a painter has different tools, in that he uses spatulas , applies paint several times to bring his picture to the way he would like it.” In this sense, influence him the painters Lucian Freud and Raymond Pettibon or the interdisciplinary creative Jonathan Meese .

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While a conceptual approach dominated by the Düsseldorf Photo School and the American New Topographic Movement (e.g. photos of post-war church interiors in the Rhineland ) prevailed in his early photographs, after his studies - especially through his stays abroad - he turned to color and shape experimenting images. Brueck's works, on which people are rarely seen, to be assigned to a certain genre, would not do them justice. They are neither pure architectural photography , nor mere landscape pictures , nor detailed shots - although they contain their elements. Rather, documentary and staged moments mix in Brueck's recordings: at first glance, Brueck depicts the exact reality . At second glance, however, this happens in a very artificial way, since the supposed “ snapshot ” quickly turns out to be a carefully balanced image composition. If image excerpts are shown, it is the focus on details that - if they were shown in the overall context - would sometimes be inconspicuous and would not be given special attention. By highlighting, they develop their own aesthetic , which the viewer can accept as " abstract " inner reality. Alternatively, he can ignore it and worry about the “real” external reality. Or he tries to combine the two. Munich art historian Anna Wondrak sums up that Brueck shows “a beauty of everyday things that we often no longer have an eye for in the hectic pace of everyday life”.

Since 2009 he has been dealing with digital image interventions. The increasingly drastic interventions in his main work since 2011 belong to the series "Distortion". The pop culture anchoring of this work is also reflected in picture titles such as "Personal Jesus", "Pink Mist", "Transmission" and "You don't look so good". Using digital brushstrokes, Brueck deconstructs the original photo and alienates it more and more from its origin. He is painting virtually, so to speak, what was previously a reproduction of reality. His work steps are well thought out. In this way, photography has ultimately become a picture in the sense of a painting.

His latest series of works, “Synthesis” (shown publicly in 2019) consists of landscape , geological and floristic photographs that have been alienated using his method. With a “daring color palette” he creates “unseen imaginative worlds” that tend towards artificiality and are in turn close to pop culture. The announcement of the exhibition says: “With its colorful, free and emotional charges of landscape, it is less about fake photography or digital manipulation than about a freedom of artistic image, as it was once propagated by the Expressionists and, if necessary, the sun 'Green' can be photographed. "

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

  • 2000: Art Association Arnsberg , Arnsberg
  • 2006: Finlandphotos1 , Goethe-Institut Helsinki, Finland
  • 2006: … in earnest , Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn , Bonn
  • 2008: que onda guero , galerie januar eV, Bochum
  • 2009: the good times are killing me , Galerie Pitrowski, Berlin
  • 2009: w , aplanat Gallery for Photography, Hamburg
  • 2009: pain is weakness leaving the body , the bakery, Munich
  • 2009: i love america and america loves me , Galerie Mülhaupt, Cologne
  • 2011: DISTORTION THREE , so what gallery, Düsseldorf
  • 2011: DISTORTION THREE , Kunstverein Duisburg, Duisburg
  • 2016: 99 Seconds of: Ralf Brueck , NRW-Forum Düsseldorf , Düsseldorf
  • 2017: Gravity , TZR Galerie Karl Brückner, Düsseldorf
  • 2018: Deconstruction , Kunst & Denker Contemporary, Düsseldorf
  • 2019: Synthesis , Kunst & Denker Contemporary, Düsseldorf

Group exhibitions

  • 1996: 12 cm , Düsseldorf Art Academy, Düsseldorf
  • 1997: Tongues of Fire , Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Gent, Belgium, and Arnheim, Netherlands
  • 1998: SK culture special show at Art Cologne , Cologne
  • 2000: 53rd Bergische Art Exhibition , Museum Baden , Solingen
  • 2001: 54th Bergische Art Exhibition , Museum Baden, Solingen
  • 2002: .... from the call class , Galerie Haus Schneider, Karlsruhe
  • 2004: Villa Romana Scholarship: Prize Winner , Florence, Italy
  • 2005: Festival Voies Off des Rencontres Photographiques d'Arles , Arles, France
  • 2007: room X room , James Harris Gallery, Seattle WA, USA
  • 2007: Open the door to a different future , New Problem, Berlin
  • 2010: 2010/2010 , organ House Art Space, Chongqing, China
  • 2012: Rethinking Reality , Kuckei + Kuckei, Berlin
  • 2013: BLOG RE-BLOG , Signal Gallery, New York NY, USA
  • 2014: BLOG RE-BLOG , Austin Center for Photography, Austin TX, USA
  • 2020 Subject and Object , Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany

Awards

Art books

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Hendrik Bohle, Jan Dimog: 5 questions for… Ralf Brueck. Dissolve. In: thelink.berlin. November 7, 2017, accessed March 9, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Katja Hütte: A day with Ralf Brueck. In: thedorf.de. Tina Husemann, Kai David Holtkamp, ​​August 24, 2015, accessed on March 9, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b c d CV - Ralf Brueck. In: ralfbrueck.com. Ralf Brueck, accessed March 9, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h Ralf Brueck. In: kunstunddenker.com. Rainer Kunst, Meike Denker, 2019, accessed on March 9, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b c d Peter Backof: Photographer Ralf Brueck. The hidden DNA of pictorial spaces. Photographer Ralf Brueck is exhibiting series from recent years at the NRW Forum in Düsseldorf. In “Deconstruction”, “Distortion” and “German-American Friendship”, nature and the city are recorded with the camera, then dissected, digitally manipulated and rearranged. In: deutschlandfunk.de. Andreas-Peter Weber, June 27, 2016, accessed on March 9, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Anna Wondrak: On the work of Ralf Brück. (PDF; 25 kB) In: aplanat.de. Retrieved March 9, 2019 .
  7. ^ Opening - Ralf Brueck - Dangerous Beauty. In: was gehtheuteab.de. W [as] G [eht] H [eute] A [b], 2019, accessed March 9, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Brueck, Ralf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brück, Ralf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photo artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf