JOHANNES WOHNSEIFER
Johannes Wohnseifer’s Polaroid Paintings blur the boundaries between photography and painting. The same size as the original Polaroid prints, these depictions of beautifully failed prints—chemical accidents of colour—upend Polaroid’s familiar function of efficiently documenting everyday reality (one of the reasons for their popularity during the 1960s and ‘70s). Heightening the resemblance, the paintings look to have been pinned to the walls, just as photographers once pinned up their Polaroids (though they are actually attached with magnets).
About the Artist
Born in Cologne, Germany, in 1967, Johannes Wohnseifer is an artist whose art playfully subverts our expectations. A recurring theme in his work is the appropriation of logos, posters, packaging, and advertising text and imagery. His works often reference German culture and history, such as the 1972 Summer Olympics and militant leftist group the Red Army Faction (1970–1998). His acrylic-on-stainless-steel painting Braun Sugar (2004), for instance, combines the logo of a German manufacturing company that started out making radios, with a typeface used by the Rolling Stones, whose song Brown Sugar references slavery and interracial sex.
Wohnseifer has exhibited at museums and galleries worldwide, including the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Union Gallery in London, and Galerie Yvon Lambert in Paris.
Ocula | 2019
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