Standpunkt: André Lützen

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Hole in the head

In his photo essays the Hamburg-based photographer André Lützen (born in 1963 in Hamburg) works with pictorial sequences on the subject of memory.

The mise-en-scène and organization of the photographs for the exhibition Hole in the Head are inspired by the narrative strategies of classic film noir. In the course of a day and a night an unknown figure recalls certain places and situations encountered in utterly different countries. When ordered according to formal correspondences, what gradually crystallizes from these disjoined occurrences and moods is the pattern of a day’s events. The pictorial sequence tells of the process of recollection. Scenes from shared temporal and geographic contexts fall apart as though spilled out through a hole in the head. But this dismembered evidence of people, places and situations is not lost – it is re-assembled by visual memory into new constellations.

Like a detective story, the photographs use fragments and sequences to investigate how the personal loss of reality might be restored. Drawn from the depths of memory, a desired version of reality emerges in which facts and yearning can no longer be clearly distinguished. ‘Memory surpasses itself and loses all taste for reality.’ (André Lützen)

By assembling separate images according to their evocative associations, André Lützen opens up a multiplicity of stories, narratives and perspectives, reminding us of the ‘necessity of human physical presence combined with the singularity and uniqueness of each individual as the subject of experience’ (Leonard Emmerling).

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication costing 3 Euro.

The Standpunkt exhibition is supported by the Philipp Otto Runge Stiftung and held in conjunction with the 3rd Triennial of Photography – Hamburg 2005.