Zur Konstruktion des Realen by Alexander Basile

(excerpt from the press note)
In his new novel, La carte et le territoire French writer Michel Houellebecq attests the works of all great contemporary photographers the creativity of a photo booth. A ruling on the actual photography, which is willingly followed by the artist Alexander Basile.

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Even for the 29-year-old the global canon of contemporary photographic imagery is a self-reproducing one, like one in loop mode continuously running machine spits out images whose aesthetics have become a universal brand. On one side stands the Düsseldorf School around artists like Bernd and Hilla Becher, Candida Höfer and Andreas Gursky, which determine the moment with a realistic-looking motif alphabet the milieu of photographic art. On the other hand there is the photograph of the moment established by magazines like Vice, which heavily influenced the last few years photographing in the commercial and private use and provides the visual constant is a constant being in the moment. Two dynamics that appear to work as a static two-pillar model, which’s alphabet is spelled by contemporary photography not serving the chance Alexander Basile seeks in dealing with photography.

Instead of a static execution of established photographic guides Basile’s photographic art is devoted rather to the sudden interaction between imaginary elements, having their reality based on a constructed yet spontaneous communication. Basile subdues himself in his work enigmatic, unpredictable messages that emerge suddenly in front of the camera lens, kept intuitively.

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In his photographs the people, landscapes and rooms around them join to an unconscious relationship, which refers to a story outside of the image. Especially with his campaigns for Carhartt he freed fashion photography of the fashion in recent years and cared only incidental to the imaged products. Instead, the image’s social moment affects beyond the image frame and opens up a space in which architecture, body, and light connect intuitively in an animated conversation.

As part of his exhibition at the Gallery Space Carhartt Store Munich Alexander Basile shows work, displaying the last campaigns. This way Basile consciously follows his theory by using his pictorial space, that all of his created works, whether commercial or artistic, are always constructions and a clear assignment becomes impossible.

The exhibited works show how the scale boundaries between commercial and artistic work run today. Basile calls this distinction no longer one and everything fades in coarse noise of constructed reality.

Zur Konstruktion des Realen – a photo exhibition by Alexander Basile
at
Carhartt Store Munich
Münchner Freiheit 2
80802 Munich/Germany

Vernissage on April 9, 2011 from 8pm to 12pm with Alexander Basile attending.
Exhibition runs from April 9 until July 1.