FONDAZIONE MAST HOSTED VERA LUTTER
Fondazione MAST presented the exhibition SPECTACULAR. It represents an exploration of light of the German artist Vera Lutter (Kaiserslautern, 1960) who put together a wide photographs selection in an unique path, made from the 90s to nowadays concerning the topics of industry, work, infrastructures for handling of goods and people.
From 11th October to 6th January the MAST Photo Galleries hosted 20 large works – unique pieces made with a specific technique – coming from museums and private collections. Additionally, an installation and a series of materials, mostly previously unknown, were exhibited, aiming to provide documentary evidence of the photographer’s creative method, set up by a path in order to cross the whole career.
WHO IS VERA LUTTER
Vera Lutter studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and in the middle of 1990s she moved to New York to study at School of Visual Arts where she found her style of choice into the photography, making her works through a process that refers to the origins of this practice: they are shot with the darkroom and require very long exposure times which don’t allow to keep track of what moves quickly in the shooting field. They are negative images and in the end they are unique and unreproducible.
THE NEGATIVE PHOTOGRAPHS
Darkrooms, as large as a whole room, are set up specifically in front of the subjects, where they remain for exposure times, changing from a few minutes to entire months according to the pinhole dimensions and light conditions. The artist enters physically and experiences the photographic device: the camera is replaced by an architectonic object. The results are large format prints – made with the largest photosensitive sheets of paper available on market – impressed directly inside the camera obscura. As a result of this process they are always negative pictures, where the lights become shadows and vice versa, causing in this way and in any case a reaction of surprise by observers who find themselves in front of a reality U-turn.
“They are spectacular works, without any show – the curator Francesco Zanot explained – because they put at the centre the audience’s experience transporting them into a dimension that crosses the ordinary.”
THE SUBJECTS
The pictures subjects – buildings, cars, industrial objects, just as the device with which they are represented and its resulting works – become monumental and out of time objects such as the coal mine of Hambach (between the largest ones in the world), the Battersea PowerStation of London (the largest brick building in Europe), the Zeppelin (the largest flying car ever made), the Effelsberg radio telescope (with a record diameter of 100 meters), the Pepsi Cola factory in Long Island, airports and construction sites (active and disused) in USA and in Europe.
Sometimes the artist recovers from containers normally used in the maritime and intermodal transport. She changes and uses them as dark rooms: so she took the picture of Rostock shipyards, between the widest active ones in Europe from the end of eighteenth century.
AUTENTHIC WORKS
It often concerns real challenges towards space and time: these works are not only impeccable reproductions, but also authentic appearances, multidimensional photographs which cross the surface of reality.
A darkroom was set at the top of entrance flight of MAST Photo Galleries as atelier space for the audience and the educational activity for kids, in order to explain the technique used by Vera Lutter to realize her works.
“SPECTACULAR. An exploration of light” is accompanied by the catalogue, edited by Fondazione MAST, containing over forty pictures, including the exhibited works. This exhibition makes a fundamental and complete instrument on the relationship between Vera Lutter and the industrial subject.
Information
Fondazione MAST è un’istituzione culturale internazionale e filantropica, basata sulla Tecnologia, l’Arte e l’Innovazione, nata a Fondazione MAST is an international and philanthropic cultural institution, based on Technology, Art and Innovation, and it was created in Bologna in 2013. It is situated close to the headquarters of the Coesia industrial group, in a multifunctional complex conceived as a link between the business and the community. MAST is an open place of sharing and collaboration where every citizen gets access to learning, arts and photography. The exhibiting spaces host temporary exhibitions dedicated to the industry and labour photography.
VERA LUTTER. SPECTACULAR
Curated by Francesco Zanot
Fondazione MAST
Via Speranza, 42 Bologna www.mast.org
Opening Times: from Tuesday to Sunday, at 10am-7pm
11th October 2024 – 6th January 2025
Free entry