/exhibition within the Białystok Interphoto Festival 2021
exhibition opening: September 24, 2021, 20:00
exhibition open until October 24, 2021 from 10:00 to 17:00 (except Mondays)
free admission
The career of Berlin-based artist Andreas Müller-Pohle began in the mid-1970s, when he introduced radical minimalist and formal impulses into photography with the concept of „Visualism”. Of great significance is his close collaboration with the philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991), whose seminal essay Towards a Philosophy of Photography was inspired by him, followed by the publication of Flusser‘s major writings by European Photography. Since the 1980s, Müller-Pohle has reflected on the fundamental changes in the essence of the technical image, leaving the safe ground of classical photography for multimedia, conceptual art, and, since 1996, video, which has become one of his key media. The exhibition in Bialystok provides the first overview of Müller-Pohle’s video works, beginning with the overwhelming Entropia (1996), a forceful „iconoclastic“ response to the decline of analog photography, executed by a huge industrial shredder. After further video works that reflect on the historical role of photography and the emerging digital age (Hiroshima, Araki at Work, Yumiko), Müller-Pohle turns to a new major topic, water, which he explores through the mediums of photography, video, and sound: The extensive Danube River Project (2005-2006) follows the entire course of the river in its cultural and ecological aspects, while the subsequent Hong Kong Waters (2009-2010) portrays the omnipresent waterscapes of the Asian megametropolis in hitherto unseen views. More recently, Müller-Pohle has turned to a new project cycle, again comprising photography, video and sound, entitled Studies on Traffic (2013-2021), in which he records patterns of movement in different parts of the world, portraying our civilization as a complex universe of interconnected anomalies that resist to be captured in a synchronized moment.”
Curator of the exhibition Pavel Vančát
Andreas Müller-Pohle
Andreas Müller-Pohle is a Berlin-based media artist and the founder of European Photography. He has published the major works of media philosopher Vilém Flusser, including his groundbreaking Philosophy of Photography and the essay Die Schrift (On Writing), which was also released in a diskette edition as early as 1987 and thus became a forerunner of today’s e-book. Andreas is the author of numerous texts on photo theory and has served as a visiting professor and lecturer at institutions in Europe, North and South America, and Asia. He has been involved in photography and media projects since the late 1970s and has worked extensively on the topic of water, including his portraits of the Danube River and the waterscapes of Hong Kong. Current works include a long-term photo, video, and sound project titled Studies on Traffic.
