FLORIAN MAIER-AICHEN
b. 1973, GermanyFlorian Maier-Aichen’s works conflate the convention of photography and painting. His well-known photographs of landscapes are also painterly investigations of space and process. Aerial photographs become topographies of abstract surfaces and narrative possibilities. Referencing analogue processes, Romantic notions of the sublime and the inherent mythologising of painting and photography’s shared legacy, Maier-Aichen attempts to reverse the genealogy of the image. The photograph-as-reproduction and as-simulacrum are secondary to the mystical power of the image as defined by Barthes in the first half of the twentieth century.
By overlapping processes of mechanical reproduction and gestural abstraction, Maier-Aichen further recognises the reciprocal relationship between media. Darkroom processes are interrupted by spontaneous pours; expressive brushwork is flattened on film. The dual concerns of object and representation remain a constant throughout the artist’s practice.
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