Grisebach's representative office is showing a double exhibition for Photo Weekend Düsseldorf 2016. Michael Wolf's works from his highly acclaimed Tokyo Compression series and selected works by Seiichi Furuya, which were created in the former GDR a few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, will be presented. The location of the exhibition has been chosen with care, as there is no other German city where Japanese culture is lived as authentically as in Düsseldorf. Grisebach combines two very different perspectives:
After studying at the Tokyo College of Photography, the Japanese artist Seiichi Furuya travelled to Europe in 1973, where he initially lived in Vienna and Graz. In 1984, at the age of 34, he took a job as an interpreter in East Germany. He documented the GDR, which was in the process of being dissolved, from his own personal perspective and captured the situation of the people in his photographs. He created sensitive but also historically relevant images that are characterised by the interplay between the private and the public, between a personal view and documentary distance. Furuya's work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions in Europe and Japan since 1975 (e.g. Albertina, Vienna; Fotomuseum Winterthur; mumok, Vienna; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography). His pictures are represented in renowned institutional collections (e.g. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; MoMA, New York; mumok, Vienna; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography). Seiichi Furuya is one of the co-founders and co-editors of the photography magazine "Camera Austria".
The German artist Michael Wolf, who settled in Hong Kong in 1994, has been focussing on the living conditions in Asian cities for many years. His impressive series of pictures "Tokyo Compression" shows people with their everyday problems in rush-hour traffic, often on the verge of exhaustion. The accompanying photo book "Tokyo Compression" was voted Photo Book of the Year in 2010. The photo artist Michael Wolf, who is interested in metropolitan phenomena, gained a lot of experience as a photo journalist for journals such as ZEIT magazine and stern magazine before starting his freelance artistic work. His work has been honoured with numerous awards and exhibited in many international collections (including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt). Works by Michael Wolf can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The San Jose Museum of Art, California; The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago and the Museum Folkwang, Essen, among others.
With this exhibition, Grisebach opens up a dialogue between two artistic perspectives on urban life.
Exhibition
13 February-1 April 2016
Bilker Straße 4-6, 40213 Düsseldorf
Opening: Friday, 12 February 2016, 6-9pm
Opening times: Mon-Fri from 10am-6pm