SPECKER, HEIDI
1962 Damme

Title: Marmor.
Date: 2010.
Technique: Archival Fine Art Print.
Depiction Size: Ca. 198 x 150cm.
Notation: . Signed, dated and numbered on frame rear panel.
Number: 1/10.
Frame: Framed. Not examined out of the frame.


Provenance:
- Collection Kasper König, Berlin (directly from artist)

Exhibitions:
- Kunstmuseum Bonn, 2018
- König Galerie, Berlin 2019

Literature:
- Exhib. cat. Heidi Specker, photographer, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Nuremberg 2018, p. 121, ill.

Subjective visual spaces and Plattenbau aesthetics
Heidi Specker is one of the leading German photographers of digital photography. With a love of detail, she makes the familiar appear in a new light and tells stories 'without creating truths with the technical tools that open up to her, but rather focussing, highlighting and pointing out existing truths.' Panoramic views and staged still lifes do not play a significant role in her oeuvre. Rather, the latter can be defined by her typical cropped scenes, which, like an optical illusion, put the viewer's vision and awareness to the test. At the heart of her work are photographs of urban, often brutalist architecture, in which ornaments and high-rise facades are analysed in terms of their surface texture, materiality and variation.

Marble
The work 'Marble' from 2010 deals with the theme of mimesis by showing real and imitation marble side by side. In this respect, the flawlessness of the high-quality material and its perfection are called into question. The large format of the work emphasises the universality of marble as a material that has been established for thousands of years, a sign of luxury and a reference to antiquity. In 2019, the photograph is part of the group exhibition 'What Beauty is, I know not' curated by Kasper König at the KÖNIG GALERIE in Berlin.

Abstraction through photography?
The colourful small-format work 'Fontana Bagni Misteriosi' (lot 211) from 2020 forms a contrast to the static marble, in which materials and structures, as well as colour contrasts and clashing patterns and contours become the subject. Specker makes the playground-like scenery look like abstract painting and allows us to participate in her reinterpretation of an everyday motif.

IM GARTEN (In the garden)
With her series 'IM GARTEN' from 2004/2005, from which the work 'Jannowitzbrücke' (lot 210) also originates, she documents the interplay of winter nature and urban landscape. The synthesis of ascetic prefabricated buildings, characterised by a certain tristesse, with the equally simple bare branches of the trees is a recurring theme in the series of pictures for which Specker was awarded the German Photo Book Prize in 2005. In 2020, König curated her exhibition 'Damme' in Lower Saxony, in which she explored her hometown of Damme in a series. The documentation of everyday rural life and the many aspects associated with it are brought together here. For König, this means a 'comparison of memories and the present'.
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