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JEFF COWEN - PHOTO MURALS
Gallery Bernd Klüser is proud to present for the first time in Germany works by the American artist Jeff Cowen in a solo exhibition titled "photo murals".
Cowens´ photographic process is atypical in conventional photography. The artists approach is not only photographic but painterly, cinematic and sculptural. He uses a lengthy, complex and highly detailed production process to create his sculptural "photo murals". Cowens´ method and physical intervention with chemical attacks, tearing, taping, painterly traces and mark making on a thick wavy paper challenge the tradition of photography generating unique, enduring, and powerfully emotive images.
The starting point is an intensive collaboration with the model, who is actively involved in the photographic session. The final motif is purposely not predetermined. Cowen is interested that the photograph subconsciously develops out of the interaction between the artist and the model and the accidents that photography generously produce and that Cowen looks for, thereby creating an organic, transcendental and lasting moment. Cowen is particularly interested in what he calls paradoxically "the non-moment". The instant just before or just after an event. He finds that in the "non-moment" the subject of the image is no longer just the physicality of the figure but that the spirit, soul and emotional world of the model competes and often overpowers the physical domain. The artist after the shooting than spends often several months analyzing and studying the work prints before making the final print.
The second, crucial step takes place in the darkroom where Cowen adds the painterly and collage-like aspects by treating the paper with various chemicals during the printing process. Cowen says, "The darkroom is a place where I paint and collage, where I can bring out the interior world of the image; my world, my nature and its relation to the image. There is something special to me about a traditional silver print. It is hand made, not from a computer, not ones and zeros; it has a vitality of its own. I can feel the hand of the photographer in it. No print can ever be the same, not like a computer." This is what brings out the unique character of his works, that create their own world full of emotion and intensive expression, as conventional photography alone could never evoke it.
Jeff Cowen was born in New York in 1966. He studied Oriental Studies at the Waseda University in Tokyo and New York University as well as Anatomy and Academic drawing at the Art Students League of New York and the New York Studio School. From 1988 to 1992 he worked as an assistant for Larry Clark and Ralph Gibson, a time period that was of great influence to him. After a longer stay in Paris, the artist moved to Berlin a year ago, where he now lives and works.
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