Born in 1970 in Mainz. Lives and works in Cologne and Berlin.
Represented by Galerie Barbara Gross (Berlin), Produzentengalerie (Hamburg), and Sonnabend Gallery (New York).
Hortus Conclusus offers a distanced view of urban parks. Lawn trampled by passers-by or burned by the sun, weeds, tags and shards of glass constitute so many banal details, finely chiselled by the overhanging eye of the camera. But beyond the precision of the photographic rendering, this series reorganizes the perspective according to which the public space is constructed.
Beate Gütschow indeed abandons the conventional photographic perspective, and refers to the pictorial representation of gardens in the art of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. The vanishing points are missing, the lines do not converge and remain parallel, the images seem to open up like a book, and all the objects follow the same value as in medieval illuminations.
Each visual consists of 150 photos assembled digitally by an algorithm, following various perspectives, in the form of 3D photogrammetric models. This technique of photogrammetry, used for topographical surveys in archeology, architecture or public works, makes it possible to determine the shape, dimensions and position of an object in space from photos. It reminds us that one of the functions of photography is to map, measure and organize reality as well as the objects that compose it. The artist then readjusts the nuances of colors, the contrasts and the luminosity of the recorded elements to recreate a continuity in these strangely closed images, and to hide the ruptures dotting such a visual puzzle.
