Berlin

Lothar Osterburg

Imaginäre Realitäten - Imagined Realities

February 18 – March 18, 2011

exhibition view
exhibition view
exhibition view
exhibition view
exhibition view
Vaulted Trailerpark, 2010
photogravure on Somerset white
81.3 x 58.4 cm (32 x 23 in.)
edition of 7
4,200. € including tax
Downtown Transfer (State 1), 2009
photogravure on somerset soft white
86.36 x 73.66 cm (34 x 29 in.)
edition of 7
4,800. € including tax
Downtown Transfer (State 2), 2010
photogravure on Somerset soft white
86.4 x 73.7 cm (34 x 29 in.)
edition of 7
4,800. € including tax
Trailerpark, 2010
photogravure on somerset white
25.4 x 25.4 cm (32 x 23 in.)
edition of 15
1,500. € including tax
Underground (State 2), 2010
photogravure on somerset soft white
56.52 x 41.27 cm (22 1/4 x 16 1/4 in. )
edition of 7
3,300. € including tax
Squatters, 2010
photogravure on somerset soft white
56.62 x 41.27 cm (22 1/4 x 16 1/4 in.)
edition of 10
3,300. € including tax
Delay on Track One, 2009
photogravure on somerset soft white
57.78 x 88.9 cm (22 3/4 x 35 in.)
edition of 7
4,800. € including tax
Beached, 2009
photoravure on somerset white
27.94 x 35.56 cm (11 x 14 in.)
edition of 10
1,100. € including tax
Bridge over Brooklyn, 2007
photogravure on Somerset White paper
48,26 x 63,5 cm
4.200 € including tax
Channel crossing with Hot Air Balloon, 2005
photogravure on Somerset White paper
55,88 x 71,12 cm
edition of 8
3,500. € including tax
Flat Earth, 2006
photogravure on Somerset White paper
75,56 x 57,15 cm
edition of 8
5,400. € including tax
Rural Electrification, 2006
photogravure on Pescia Manani White paper
17,78 x 27,94 cm
edition of 12
950. € including tax
Sailboats III, 1999
photogravure on handmade paper soft white
19,05 x 19,05 cm
edition of 7
1,500. € including tax
Tempest in a Teacup, 2000
photogravure on Somerset White paper
55,88 x 57,15 cm
edition of 15
4,300. € including tax
Tree dwellings, 2003
photogravure on Somerset Soft White paper
85,72 x 59,05 cm
edition of 8
3,500. € including tax
Zeppelin over Timbuktu, 2003
photogravure on Somerset Soft White paper
85,72 x 59,06 cm
edition of 8
3,500. € including tax
Zion Homestead, 2007
photogravure on Somerset soft white
45,72 x 70,48 cm
edition of 8
3,800. € including tax
Underneath Brooklyn, 2009
photogravure on Somerset Soft White paper
56,51 x 41,28 cm
edition of 7
3,300. € including tax
Piranesi (state 1), 2008
photogravure on Somerset soft white, tea stained
22 x 27.5 in. (55.9 x 69.9 cm)
signed and dated lower right
4.300 € including tax
Piranesi (state 2), 2008
photogravure, aquatint and hardground etching,
drypoint and scraping on Somerset soft white, tea stained
22 x 27.5 in. (55.9 x 69.9 cm)
4.300 € including tax
Soap Kitchen, 2004
gum print on Somerset white
55.9 x 69.9 cm (22 x 27 1/5 in.)
edition of 3
2.500 € including tax
Greek Windmill on a Snowbank, 2002
photogravure
35,6 x 27,9 cm
edition of 10
1.400 € including tax
Soap Bathroom, 1997
gum print on Somerset white paper
48.3 x 58.4 cm (19 x 23 in.)
edition of 2
1.750 € including tax
Grand Central, 2007
photogravure on Somerset white paper
57 x 69,5 cm
edition of 8
4.400 € including tax
Tenaments, 2010
photogravure, aquatin and scraping
56,5 x 41,3 cm
edition of 10
3.300 € including tax
Soap Bookshelves, 2004
gum print on Somerset white paper
triptych, each 58,4 x 35,6 cm
5.300 € including tax
Soap Office, 1997
gum print on Somerset white paper
48,3 x 58,4 cm
edition of 2
1.750 € including tax
Soap Bedroom with TV, 1997
gum print on Somerset white paper
48,3 x 58,4 cm
edition of 2
1.750 € including tax

Reception for the artist: 18 February 2011, 7 – 9 pm
Artist talk: 19 February 2011, 4 pm

Moeller Fine Art Berlin is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Germany of works by Lothar Osterburg. Born in Braunschweig, Germany in 1961, Osterburg lives and works in New York, where he is the acknowledged master of photogravure. His work, based on models which he creates and photographs, speaks to lost times and faraway places. In his sailboats and spacecrafts, vaulted caves, and barren landscapes, Osterburg explores the freedom discovered in travels to unknown lands through scenes staged in the artist’s studio. This exhibition will include approximately forty photogravures, five gum prints, and two video works.

Lothar Osterburg’s recent work is based on Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Carceri d'invenzione [Imaginary Prisons], a series of 16 first and second state etchings depicting enormous subterranean vaults with stairs and towering machines. Osterburg begins by constructing a scale model of Piranesi’s prints from memory, and then allowing his work to develop intuitively. The result, therefore, is a combination of his own recollection and that of history. He photographs the model from the point of view of a miniature inhabitant, revealing the monumental quality of the space. A photogravure plate is then created and designated the ‘first state’, that is, the first stage of a journey through time and space. Osterburg reworks the image for a ‘second state’, using the same tools Piranesi used over 200 years ago. Each step of this journey is documented in stop-motion animation film, accompanied by the music of composer and performer Elizabeth Brown (the artist’s wife). A second video, “Piranesi 2012”, takes the process one step further by re-working the original model, which in turn leads to further prints, bringing the eighteenth century construction into the twenty-first century. Both videos will be shown in the exhibition.

In his choice of photogravure, Osterburg emulates the great photographers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The soft focus, the infinite range of velvet blacks and rich grays, the scratches retained from the printmaking process, and the use of rough, unfinished models all combine to suspend the final image somewhere between the real and the imaginary.

Lothar Osterburg has exhibited widely in Europe, Japan, and the United States, and his work is included in numerous important public and private collections. From 1982 to 1987, Lothar Osterburg studied printmaking and experimental film at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, in his native Braunschweig, Germany. Osterburg then moved to the United States in 1987, where he lived in San Francisco and New York. He has been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony in 1996, 1997, and 2002, and from Virginia Center of the Creative Arts in 1999. In 2003, he received a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and in 2010 was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the Academy Award in Art, and a Bard College Research Grant. In addition to producing his own work as a photographer, Osterburg has collaborated with artists such as Lee Friedlander, Sol LeWitt, Wayne Thiebaud, Jim Dine, and Adam Fuss. He is currently a member of the faculty of Bard College and The Cooper Union.

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