This article was originally published on BLOUIN ARTINFO
Galerie Karsten Greve presents Roger Ballen’s “St. Moritz” at their gallery venue in St. Moritz.
The exhibition showcases a series of Roger Ballen’s meticulously created works, arranged intricately and staged upon to be photographed. The self-taught artist, a Ph.D. in geology, knows his materials well. It’s like soil to him that he reshapes through his artistic vision with the thousands of props that he uses in each of his frames. His stories obscure the human protagonists in an unconventional appearance to be focused upon amidst the ruins of the housing surrounding them. His works are often integrated further beyond its structural gimmicks to knit a multilayered sight and scenario. Through these striking yet resolving atmospheres that he creates for his art form, Ballen’s works thrive and instigate the surrealist movement following one very specific term, “écriture automatique” that he creates to map the unpredictability of mind and the mental dynamics of artistic experience. Shares the artist, “The images I create, I create not to inform. They are much rather meant to be understood as a coherent commentary on the chaos in our incomprehensible world. If I could attach any meaning to the images, they would be nothing more than simple photographs.”
The metaphorical symbolizations express seamlessly with a blend of cardboard drawings, newspaper clippings. Ballen says, “Black and white is what I do. It is unadulterated, stripped back, minimalistic and does not imply that it is a depiction or duplication of reality.”
The exhibition is on view from August 25 through November 18, 2017 at Galerie Karsten Greve, Via Maistra 4, 7500 St. Moritz, Switzerland.
For details, visit: http://www.blouinartinfo.com/galleryguide/galerie-karsten-greve/overview
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