Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

Hi everybody, I am glad to have this opportunity to be the guest blogger this week! I`d like to start with »Every single crash«, a work of my Polish colleague Filip Berendt. Every Single Crash is a combination of sharp, aggressive colours, shapes and luminous splinters, made during the artist’s residence at the Taipei Artist’s Villages. Yet, the project does not owe its character merely to the exotic appeal of the Asian destination. Berendt’s works are, above all, studies on the process of colour absorption. The dominant feature of the compositions is their objectlessness. Our attention is grabbed by lines – vertical and horizontal. The photos follow a scheme based on structured colour sets and simple geometrical forms. Figuration has been replaced with a pure aesthetic image. What matters enormously in Berendt’s works is the “situation of impression”. His analogue abstraction betrays a dynamic nature. The viewers are in for a whole lot of stimuli and links at the crossroads of vents. Thus, they find themselves entangled in a space between the rationalised sharp-sightedness and short-sightedness. The aggressive folding of the photographs’ flat surface achieved through its collision with colour first distracts the eye in order to allow it to focus the next moment. What matters less is the pleasure of shapes or obsessive concentration on a given element, which yield priority to the sheer process of soaking the colour. (Text: Piotr Drewko)