Florian Maier-Aichen
28 Jun - 30 Sep 2007
Florian Maier-Aichen
The best general view
2007
C-print
84 x 70 1/4 in. framed
Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
The best general view
2007
C-print
84 x 70 1/4 in. framed
Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
Florian Maier-Aichen
Above June Lake
2005
C-print
86 1⁄2 x 72 1⁄2 in. framed
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, purchased with funds provided by the Photography Committee
Above June Lake
2005
C-print
86 1⁄2 x 72 1⁄2 in. framed
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, purchased with funds provided by the Photography Committee
MOCA Focus:
FLORIAN MAIER-AICHEN
06.28.07 - 09.30.07
Florian Maier-Aichen’s photographic work portrays natural, industrial, and cultural landscapes with stylized eccentricity. Employing tropes of documentary photography in unconventional ways, Maier-Aichen creates sublime images rich with reference and allusion. While his richly hued photographs of the California coast, the Alps, and other locales are seductively beautiful in their expansive viewpoints, they are also nuanced with a subtle disquiet and criticality.
German by birth and educated at the University of Essen and the University of California, Los Angeles, Maier-Aichen challenges the stringent rules of contemporary German photography as typified by the use of diffused light and a straightforward, objective point of view. Investigating more flexible photographic strategies, Maier-Aichen begins with a traditional large-format image captured on film, framing his subjects from extreme angles or aerial views. His practice is a modern-day form of combination-printing, weaving disparate images from distinct sources and applying myriad creative adjustments to each in order to produce a seamless photograph that does not betray its intricate and layered composition. Like “photogenic matrices,” these works are more closely aligned with the conventional production of a painter than that of a photographer. In this way, Maier-Aichen’s thread of influence can be traced back to the nascence of photography, when practitioners sought ways to adapt the medium to painterly ends. Maier-Aichen’s unique palette, unconventional vantage points, and combination of photographs with hand-rendered and dropped-in details have yielded a body of work that is rich with historical and contemporary references.
Curated for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, by MOCA Curatorial Associate Rebecca Morse, MOCA Focus: Florian Maier-Aichen will include all new work by the artist and will be accompanied by a catalogue that features documentary images of the artist’s working process in addition to reproductions of his completed works.
MOCA Focus: Florian Maier-Aichen is made possible by generous endowment support from The Nimoy Fund for New and Emerging Artists, the Fran and Ray Stark Foundation Fund to Support the Work of Emerging Artists, The Katherine S. Marmor Award, and The Max Yavno Fund.
Major support is also provided by a multi-year grant from The James Irvine Foundation. Additional generous support is provided by David Hockney.
In-kind support is provided by BPM Magazine.
FLORIAN MAIER-AICHEN
06.28.07 - 09.30.07
Florian Maier-Aichen’s photographic work portrays natural, industrial, and cultural landscapes with stylized eccentricity. Employing tropes of documentary photography in unconventional ways, Maier-Aichen creates sublime images rich with reference and allusion. While his richly hued photographs of the California coast, the Alps, and other locales are seductively beautiful in their expansive viewpoints, they are also nuanced with a subtle disquiet and criticality.
German by birth and educated at the University of Essen and the University of California, Los Angeles, Maier-Aichen challenges the stringent rules of contemporary German photography as typified by the use of diffused light and a straightforward, objective point of view. Investigating more flexible photographic strategies, Maier-Aichen begins with a traditional large-format image captured on film, framing his subjects from extreme angles or aerial views. His practice is a modern-day form of combination-printing, weaving disparate images from distinct sources and applying myriad creative adjustments to each in order to produce a seamless photograph that does not betray its intricate and layered composition. Like “photogenic matrices,” these works are more closely aligned with the conventional production of a painter than that of a photographer. In this way, Maier-Aichen’s thread of influence can be traced back to the nascence of photography, when practitioners sought ways to adapt the medium to painterly ends. Maier-Aichen’s unique palette, unconventional vantage points, and combination of photographs with hand-rendered and dropped-in details have yielded a body of work that is rich with historical and contemporary references.
Curated for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, by MOCA Curatorial Associate Rebecca Morse, MOCA Focus: Florian Maier-Aichen will include all new work by the artist and will be accompanied by a catalogue that features documentary images of the artist’s working process in addition to reproductions of his completed works.
MOCA Focus: Florian Maier-Aichen is made possible by generous endowment support from The Nimoy Fund for New and Emerging Artists, the Fran and Ray Stark Foundation Fund to Support the Work of Emerging Artists, The Katherine S. Marmor Award, and The Max Yavno Fund.
Major support is also provided by a multi-year grant from The James Irvine Foundation. Additional generous support is provided by David Hockney.
In-kind support is provided by BPM Magazine.