Room Number 208 : Leirubakki, Iceland; Berlin, Hannover; Rethen

Limited to 10 pieces worldwide.The latest volume of The cheap camera diaries 2010-2015 by German photographer Rainer Strzolka, containing most of the pictures shown at 2 exhibitions in Berlin and Hannover.Rainer Strzolka, b. 1956 in Berlin, Germany, makes photos, paintings, performances and media art. By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle class values, Strzolka seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and the interval that articulates the stream of daily events. Moments are depicted that only exist to punctuate the human drama in order to clarify our existence and to find poetic meaning in everyday life.His photos are given improper functions: significations are inversed and form and content merge. Shapes are dissociated from their original meaning, by which the system in which they normally function is exposed. Initially unambiguous meanings are shattered and disseminate endlessly. By studying sign processes, signification and communication, he tries to create works in which the actual event still has to take place or just has ended: moments evocative of atmosphere and suspense that are not part of a narrative thread. The drama unfolds elsewhere while the build-up of tension is frozen to become the memory of an event that will never take place.His works never shows the complete structure. This results in the fact that the artist can easily imagine an own interpretation without being hindered by the historical reality. By exploring the concept of landscape in a nostalgic way, he investigates the dynamics of landscape, including the manipulation of its effects and the limits of spectacle based on our assumptions of what landscape means to us. Rather than presenting a factual reality, an illusion is fabricated to conjure the realms of our imagination.His works sometimes radiate a cold and latent violence. At times, disconcerting beauty emerges. The inherent visual seductiveness, along with the conciseness of the exhibitions, further complicates the reception of their manifold layers of meaning. By emphasising aesthetics, he makes work that generates diverse meanings. Associations and meanings collide. Space becomes time and language becomes image.His works are characterised by the use of everyday objects in an atmosphere of middleclass mentality in which recognition plays an important role. By putting the viewer on the wrong track, he often creates work using creative game tactics, but these are never permissive. Play is a serious matter: during the game, different rules apply than in everyday life and even everyday objects undergo transubstantiation.His works question the conditions of appearance of an image in the context of contemporary visual culture in which images, representations and ideas normally function. By examining the ambiguity and origination via retakes and variations, he tries to increase the dynamic between audience and author by objectifying emotions and investigating the duality that develops through different interpretations.His works establish a link between the landscape's reality and that imagined by its conceiver. These works focus on concrete questions that determine our existence.

• | Author: Rainer Strzolka, Rainer Strzolka
• | Publisher: Independently Published
• | Publication Date: Dec 14, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 90 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1791694918
• | ISBN-13: 9781791694913