Frank Thiel
Sean Kelly Gallery is delighted to announce the first major North American gallery exhibition of photographs by German artist Frank Thiel who recently joined the gallery.
Thiel's exhibition is comprised of fifteen large-scale color photographs that document the ongoing reconstruction of the city of Berlin. Whilst he has been photographing Berlin for over ten years, Thiel's monumental works are not merely documentation, but picture a city reborn after a tumultuous history. Thiel refers to Berlin as "the youngest city in the world" and furthermore states that "the city suffers from an overdose of history". Yet it does not suffer from its sediments like other European cities, but from the consequences of its eruptions. The whole city is an urban and spiritual patchwork of the beginning of the 21st century." The architectural spaces in these photographs are not only reflections of a turbulent social and political history, but of the emergence of new patterns of urban existence. Previous bodies of work have focused on such topics as state surveillance and the privatization of public space.
Thiel has exhibited widely in museums and galleries worldwide; his works are included in the collections of many prominent international museums. Recent solo exhibitions have included: City TV (Berlin), Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center, Athens; Galeria Helga de Alvear, Madrid; Galerie Art+Public, Geneva; IMAGO'99, Universidad de Salamanca, Centro de Fotografia, Patio de Escuelas; Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela; Statements, Art28 Basel, Basel. Selected group exhibitions have included: CTRL [Space] Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe; SK 76 / 2-Mp (XIII), Art Unlimited, Art32 Basel, Basel; 90 60 90, Museo Jacobo Borges, Caracas; Remake Berlin, Fotomuseum Winterthur; dAPPERTutto, 48. Biennale di Venezia, Venice; Le corps évanoui, les images subites, Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne; After The Wall, Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
Forthcoming exhibitions include: Frank Thiel, Kunstverein Ludwigsburg; XXV. Bienal de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo; Human Park, Palau de la Virreina, Barcelona; Agua. - Wasser, Mexico City; Brasília – Ruina e Utopia, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Brasília.
