Aernout Mik, Communitas, 2010, © Aernout Mik und carlier | gebauer, Berlin, Foto: Florian Braun, Museum Folkwang, Essen, 29 October 2011 - 29 January 2012.
Museum Folkwang, Essen
Chris Killip – arbeit/work
Painted Film – Posters by Renato Casero
4 February 2012 to 15 April 2012
February 2012 – From Saturday, 4 February 2012, the Museum Folkwang, Essen is presenting two new exhibitions in the areas of photography and posters. The exhibitions in the Folkwang New Building will run until 15 April 2012.
Chris Killip – arbeit/work
The Museum Folkwang is presenting an overview of the work of the photographer Chris Killip. After the retrospective of the work of Joel Sternfeld, a dedicated color photographer, we present an exceptional black and white photographer in Chris Killip, whose work is distinguished by its considerable empathy, subtle observation of events and precise depiction. The exhibition includes 126 photographs from the period 1969 – 2005. The regional and local contexts of Chris Killip’s work provided 1970s British photography with impulses which are still recognizable in the color photography of contemporary documentary photographers today.
The thematic focus is an exploration of profound socio-cultural and structural changes related to the deindustrialisation of the North of England. As such it awakens memories of structural change in the Ruhr Area. With his series made on the Isle of Man or his work on the century old tradition of pilgrimage in the West of Ireland, this exhibition also shows Killip’s early portrait work which reflect the photographer’s deep interest in people.
Chris Killip (born in 1946 in Douglas on the Isle of Man) began his photographic career as assistant to Adrian Flowers in London and from 1969 worked as an independent photographer. He is a founding member of Side Gallery in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he organized numerous exhibitions as curator and director. Since 1973 there have been numerous exhibitions of his work. Chris Killip has been professor of photography at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts since 1991.
The exhibition is accompanied by a communication program (details available during the press preview). A catalogue is available, 136 pages, 28 Euro, published by Edition Folkwang / Steidl.
During the course of the exhibition Chris Killip – arbeit/work, there will also be a film shown in the museum foyer.
Painted Film – Posters by Renato Casaro
In this exhibition, the Deutsche Plakat Museum presents an overview of posters designed by an exceptional artist. Renato Casaro, born in Treviso in 1935, is held to be one of the last great poster designers, whose work influenced the international world of film posters over decades.
The particularity of his way of working was in a careful transformation of his studies into posters. The artist treated his studies as if they were the true final product and not the poster he had been contracted to do. These intricately designed paintings could not be adequately reproduced for print technological reasons during his most productive period, so that they are almost more in demand than the posters themselves.
The exhibition covers three periods and for each period posters for certain genres of film that Casaro worked on are shown. Among his works are posters for famous monumental films such as The Last Emperor, for mafia sagas and Once Upon a Time in America as well as fantasy films such as Momo. The exhibition provides numerous examples of the development of posters from the idea through the sketch to the painting and then to the poster.
As determined as Casaro was in developing his own pictorial style, he was equally determined to abandon the genre of film posters once photography and the demands of corporate design restricted his artistic freedom.
With the work of Casaro, a focus is being placed on film posters that will be continued in further exhibitions in 2012 and 2013.
A catalogue is published by Folkwang / Steidl, 128 pages, 20 Euro.
Chris Killip and Renato Casaro will both be present in person for the press conference and opening ceremony.
Images are available for downloading at www.museum-folkwang.de
Opening Hours Tue – Sun 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., Fri 10 a.m. – 10.30 p.m., Closed Mondays
Visitor Office Museumsplatz 1, 45128 Essen, T +49 201 8845 444/000,
info@museum-folkwang.essen.de
Press Office Doerthe Ramin, T +49 201 8845 103
presse@museum-folkwang.essen.de
