Oliver Boberg

Lunchtime Lecture

Join us for a lunchtime lecture by Fürth, Germany-based artist Oliver Boberg in the Wieden+Kennedy Atrium on Friday November 2nd at noon. Presented in conjunction with Quality Pictures and Wieden+Kennedy Art Buying in celebration of Boberg's first solo exhibition in the Pacific Northwest.

See the exhibit from November 1 - December 29, 2007 at Quality Pictures consisting of recent photographs and video works by Boberg. Mr. Boberg will also be present at the November 1st First Thursday reception at Quality Pictures from 6 - 9 pm.

Boberg has exhibited his renowned constructed photographs to international acclaim. His works are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art among others.

Large-format multi-image works from the Seiten/Pages series will be shown in our west gallery while films from the Nacht-Orte / Night Sites series will be shown in our rear project space.

With the Seiten/Pages series, Boberg's use of multiple imagery within each work comes directly from his fondness for comic books which is also evident in the layout. With these works, Boberg is interested in how the relationships of the photos and the connections they uncover alter the viewers comprehension of what is being depicted.

Inner connections between combined images, in both color and black & white, are created in each Seite/Page. Each image is no longer perceivable without the others and a connection, as subtle as it may be, is involuntarily made in the mind of the viewer.

This is the first time that Boberg has used black & white images and he has said "It is clear that we percept a non-color image in a different way than a color picture. They hold the notion of history, but also documentary style and maybe even nostalgia."

Boberg's photographs are deceptively simple conclusions to a complex process. A typical image begins as a collection of details describing a type of area or edifice from which he culls items to be included in elaborate scale models that he constructs. Boberg then photographs the models from predetermined vantage points, achieving the finished photograph. Through his careful manipulation of visual information and mental expectation, Boberg achieves a strangely compelling "reality" that is recognizable and unknowable; banal and universal.

Boberg has also suggested that the viewer approach each "Page" like a poem. Each image is like a verse in a poem. Each image must be able to stand for itself, but they must work together as well.

In Seite 5 (at left), two images are combined; images that appear to be film stills from Boberg's films, albeit ones that have never been made. Boberg shows film grain on the images to emphasize the movie aspect. The non-specific destruction scene might arouse an uneasy film connotation, while the darker way along a curved, old wall might give the viewer a rather mixed feeling of "the way home on a late evening" or, even old movie memories.

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"It is clear that we percept a non-color image in a different way than a color picture. They hold the notion of history, but also documentary style and maybe even nostalgia." Oliver Boberg