Clemens Botho und Philipp Goldbach
Gebr. Goldbach
08.06. – 19.08.2012

Gebr. Goldbach is the first joint exhibition by Clemens Botho (1979) and Philipp (1978) Goldbach. At first glance, their artistic works seem to have little in common: Clemens Botho Goldbach designs his projects for the respective exhibition location and combines historical materials, found architectural elements, natural pieces and construction materials to create architectures that can only be recognized as artistic reconstructions or new buildings through the direct reference to the location. Philipp Goldbach has dealt intensively with the relationship between photography and writing. As with his brother, however, in addition to the reference to historical materials and techniques, the process of creating the work plays a key role, through which the work becomes largely readable.

With the installation of a paneled so-called “strip foundation” in the main room of the Kunsthalle, Clemens Botho Goldbach will follow up on earlier works in which he already dealt with structural components. The decision to use the foundation, i.e. a supporting structure that is usually not visible itself, is based on the specific architectural conditions of the city of Bremerhaven: landing stages, locks, connecting ports and turning basins are based on this constructive principle and can be seen as architectural cornerstones of local urban development.

Philipp Goldbach will make an intermediate step in photographic image enlargement the central working principle: “exposure series” or “test strips” are a classic means of analog photography for approximating the image result. On a sheet of photographic paper, a motif is initially created by holding it using a stencil and exposing it with variable times, from which the photographer selects the desired tonal value. In the Bremerhaven work, however, the gradation of the gray values ​​and times is not in the service of printing a negative, but is a construction principle of images whose compositional framework is provided by works of minimal art. Their abstract architectures are photographically reconstructed on site in a successive process of covering and exposing.

Curated by Dr. Kai Kähler.