About

I was born in Cologne Südstadt and grew up near the cathedral and on the right bank of the Rhine. After stays in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Rome and Bremen I live and work in Cologne again.

Statement

Do we see and think, remember and feel in series? Can we grasp the things around us, our sensations and suspicions, our fears and doubts only in series, in stretches, in typologies? Is it the case that a single picture seems too fluttery, has no justification and perhaps cannot produce any continuity in our general insecurity? Is the singular image present only for fractions of a second and then gone down again and disappeared in the suction simply because it appears and disappears in masses every day? Is our world explained more simply by the fact that we always want to see, investigate and recognize things in variations? Or are it not in our thoughts, in our dreams and memories individual images, or vaguely outlined ideas that have accompanied and shaped us over the years and that perhaps repeatedly penetrate our consciousness and evoke associations with new experiences? We know the experience that photographs, pictures or objects seem to have just waited to be photographed, painted or formed, and that one often sees or recognizes their self-evident existence in these works. This self-evident existence then also applies to each authentic work in its singular appearance as certainly hopeless utterance or expression of an individual person, only the actual context then does not necessarily result from a clearly defined series of motifs or series, but from a broader individual artistic approach, which draws its vocabulary from an overall complex that cannot always be interpreted superficially.

Education

  • 1984 – 1990 | Klasse Bernd Becher, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (DE)
  • 1982 – 1984 | Klasse Wolfgang Ramsbott, Hochschule der Künste, Berlin (DE)

Institution (Work Experience)

  • 2018 | Lehrauftrag, Rheinische Fachhochschule Köln (DE)
  • 2010 – 2011 | Vertretungsprofessur Kunsthochschule für Medien KHM, Köln (DE)
  • 2004 – 2006 | Gastprofessur, Hochschule für Künste Bremen (DE)

Selected Awards

  • 2019 | Kunstpreis der Künstler, DIE GROSSE Kunstausstellung Düsseldorf (DE)
  • 2017 | Kunstpreis der AKM Koblenz Arbeitsgemeinschaft Bildender Künstler am Mittelrhein (DE)
  • 2008 | Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf (DE)
  • 2004 | Künstlerdorf Schöppingen (DE)
  • 2003 | Künstlerhaus Lukas Ahrenshoop (für 2004) (DE)
  • 1996 | Chargesheimer – Preis der Stadt Köln (DE)
  • 1995 | Villa Massimo, Rom (für 1996) (IT)
  • 1993 | Arbeitsstipendium des Landes Schleswig – Holstein (DE)

Selected Exhibitions/Publications

  • Ausstellungen / Exhibitions:
  • 2019, 2009 | Die Photographische Sammlung Sk Stiftung Kultur, Köln (DE)
  • 2019 | Kunstverein Marburg (DE)
  • 2019 | Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (DE)
  • 2018 | stefan schuelke fine books cologne (DE)
  • 2017 | Mittelrhein Museum, Koblenz (DE)
  • 2016 | Galerie Heinz Holtmann, Köln (DE)
  • 2016 | Kunstverein Leverkusen (DE)
  • 2016 | LVR Landesmuseum, Bonn (DE)
  • 2015 | Galerie Evelyn Drewes, Hamburg (DE)
  • 2015 | Kunstverein Sundern (DE)
  • 2012 | ROSPHOTO State Museum and Exhibition Centre, St.Petersburg (RU)
  • 2012 | AKM Künstlerhaus Metternich, Koblenz (DE)
  • 2011 | Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Köln (DE)
  • 2010 | Landesgalerie Linz (AT)
  • 2010 | Fotomuseum Antwerpen (BE)
  • 2010 | Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kultur, Oldenburg (DE)
  • Publikationen / Publications:
  • 2019 | Bunker Boris Becker, snoek Verlag, Köln (DE)
  • 2016 | “Staged Confusion” Sieveking Verlag (DE)
  • 2015 | “Berlin 1978 – 1987” pogobooks, Berlin (DE)
  • 2011 | “Wüstenbilder desert images”, Wienand Verlag Köln (DE)
  • 2010 | “deserts and fields” Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kultur Oldenburg, (DE)
  • 2009 | Boris Becker Photographien 1984 – 2009” Dumont Verlag Köln (DE)
  • 2009 | “Fakes” Darling Publications, Köln (DE)
  • 2006 | „Artefakte“ Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (DE)
  • 2000 | „Claims And Constructions“ Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg (DE)

Personal Website

http://www.boris-becker.com

Works

Boris Becker | Constructions (1993 - ongoing)

Boris Becker | Constructions (1993 - ongoing)

These seemingly everyday, ordinary motifs are precisely composed representations and elevate the construction site and fairground constructions to independent objects with a sculptural character. The photographs are an attempt to make the everyday experience of technological forms appear as aesthetically perceptible sculptural works. In this new series, he shows how changeable his point of view and his programmatic guidelines can be. His concern is no longer analytical photography, but the sculptural aspect of these objects. He elevates these constructions to aesthetic entities. In doing so, he chooses a section in which a generous pictorial design tensions the installations in the surface in such a way that they maintain their dominant position. The pictures are deserted and thus allow a complete concentration on the photographed object. Rupert Pfab, Düsseldorf, 2005

Format:

Photo / Video

Boris Becker | Bunkers (1984 - 1990)

Boris Becker | Bunkers (1984 - 1990)

With the beginning of his studies in Düsseldorf, Boris Becker initially concentrated on the series of bunkers. The b/w and color photographs document sculptural, graphic or, as in the color images of the series, painterly aspects of bunkers. Originally disguised as pseudo-architectures, the buildings in Boris Becker's photographs reveal only to a limited extent their former function and current urban use. Objective information and insight through documentary photography is only possible to a limited extent. An aspect that, in addition to the concentration on aesthetic peculiarities, also belongs in the further development of Boris Becker's work to one of the multi-layered levels of meaning in his work. Barbara Hofmann - Johnson, Cologne, 2014

Format:

Photo / Video

Boris Becker | Fakes (1999 - 2002)

Boris Becker | Fakes (1999 - 2002)

Fakes depicts concealment against the background of its failure: The discovery. If you look at the series of fakes, it is difficult to find a useful order to figure out what a good smuggler's hideaway should be. A picture, however, that functions as the hiding place itself is an object of a completely different nature. The paintings photographed by Becker are such hiding places. These pictures are painted with Cocaine containing oil color. The drug can be used not only in the color but also to recover it from it afterwards. The bounded cocaine becomes a prerequisite for painting as an occasion, as well as for the material substance, which is always to be seen. But even if the drug is used as a visual object and therefore always remains visible, it is however not visually in any way. Rafael von Uslar 2010

Format:

Photo / Video

Boris Becker | Artefakte (2009 - ongoing)

Boris Becker | Artefakte (2009 - ongoing)

With the Artefakte series, Boris Becker expands his artistic field to include the theme of seemingly absolute disorder in private, commercial and public spaces. By examining obviously chaotic scenarios in indoor and outdoor shots, Becker conveys the ambivalence of ordered and disordered spaces and situations. The shots move on the fine line between inscrutable incoherences and the recognition of ordered structures within various closed platforms that are inaccessible to the viewer. On the one hand, the images raise the question of the significance of socially recognized parameters of order and, on the other hand, their high aesthetic impact conveys coherent, purely visually functioning image systems.

Format:

Photo / Video