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Deutsche Fotografische Akademie

Claus Stolz

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About

Perception, memory and expectation, proximity and distance, context and existence, the magic and poetry of the photographic ... an exploration.

Statement

Between "analog anarchy and AI": A photographic journey that has now lasted several decades. Since the mid-1990s I have been developing special photo-artistic processes. Ultimately in the sense of Ernst Bloch's "matter is possibility": insane distances, pure light, energy and radiation, destruction. Chlorophyll and silicon, material and apparatus. Transformation, subversion and irritation, nature and culture - my work groups move in between. "The human being faces only himself" (Heisenberg).

Education

  • 1988–92 I “Bildende Kunst“ Freie Kunstakademie Mannheim (DE)

Institution (Work Experience)

  • 2016–heute I Dozent, Freie Kunstakademie Mannheim (DE)

Selected Awards

  • 2012 I Dave Bown Projects - 5th Semiannual Competition (Curators: Karl Hecksher, Andrea Karnes, Mary Kate O’Hare) Honorable Mention (US) 1998 I Welde Kunstpreis (DE)

Selected Exhibitions/Publications

  • 2023 I REFLEKTOR II, TUFA Trier (DE) I VOR ORT, Mannheimer Kunstverein (DE) I VERMESSUNGEN, PORT25 Raum für Gegenwartskunst, Mannheim (DE)
  • 2022 I REFLEKTOR I, Neue Sächsische Galerie Chemnitz (DE) I ANALOG TOTAL, Grassi-Museum Leipzig (DE) I BOUT TUE MEERBLICK  Rebekka Brunke/Barbara Hindahl/Claus Stolz/Els van Riel/Konstantin Weber, Atelierhaus Altes Güteramt Mannheim (DE) I REFLEKTOR, Neue Sächsische Galerie Chemnitz (DE)
  • 2021 I LICHTECHT, Edgar Lissel and Claus Stolz, Port25 Raum für Gegenwartskunst, Mannheim, Germany (DE)
  • 2019 | CHAMBER PLAY, Knut Eckstein, Barbara Hindahl, Claus Stolz, Oberwelt, Stuttgart (DE)
  • 2017 I VELBUELE, Myriam Holme and Claus Stolz, Kunstverein Bellevue-Saal, Wiesbaden (DE) I ICHDUERSIESES, Delegierte Kunstwerke, Kunstverein Ludwigsburg (DE)
  • 2016 I TIMELINES, Kunstverein Ludwigshafen (DE) - CONCRETE AND GENERATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY / Part II Photo Edition Berlin, Berlin (DE) I Claus Stolz SOLITÄR, Fotoraum Köln e.V. (DE) 2015 I RAW EXPOSURE Photographic works based on (in-)organic and mechanical processes by Edgar Lissel (AT), Harald Mairböck (AT), Claus Stolz (DE) and Jiri Sigut (CZ), Photo Edition Berlin, Berlin (DE) I Fotofever, Paris (FR) - Photo Basel (CH) - Lichtbild und Datenbild – Spuren Konkreter Fotografie, Museum im Kulturspeicher Würzburg, (DE)
  • 2014 I Heliografien, Kunstverein Trier, Germany (S) I Ein Gramm Licht. Alte Verfahren in jungen fotografischen Bildern, Museum Industriekultur Nürnberg (DE)
  • Publikationen (Auswahl)
  • 2022 I KAMMERSPIEL  CHAMBERPLAY, Kehrer Verlag (DE)
  • 2021 I Photosphären - Photospheres, Edgar Lissel, Claus Stolz (DE)
  • 2017 | SPOTLIGHT – Twenty Years of the Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography, Snoeck Publishers (CH)
  • 2016 I Lichtbild und Datenbild, Museum im Kulturspeicher Würzburg, Kehrer Verlag (DE)
  • 2015 I Ein Gramm Licht, Museen der Stadt Nürnberg, Michael Imhof Verlag (DE),
  • 2011 I Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography, Benteli (CH)
  • 2009 I SUNBURNS, Kehrer Verlag (DE)
  • 2000 I Ins Grüne / Into The Greenery, Mannheimer Kunstverein, (DE)

Works

Heliographs (1995–today)

Heliographs (1995–today)

For the heliographs, I point my recording equipment, equipped with huge converging lenses, directly into the sun and damage film or photographic plates in doses by extreme overexposure. The radiation energy causes the material to bubble, burst, melt or crystallize. The results depend on the type of film used, the shooting and processing parameters. In the process, I take the photographic image ad absurdum. The energy of the sun strains the material to destruction; one might think of the creation myth of the origin of the world. The philosopher Wolfram Hogrebe described the universe as meaningless, as a "cold home" - our deities, in turn, give us a little metaphysical warmth. My work invites us to engage in this field of tension, across all borders. It is the search for a quintessence of overexposure and darkroom, energy, time and transience, material and experiment, research and chance, alchemy and beauty.

Format:

Photo / Video

Credits
Author:
Claus Stolz
Work:
Heliographs (1995–today)
Year Created:
2024

Chamber Play (2020–today)

Chamber Play (2020–today)

In the work series Chamber Play I combine in diverse settings grown and produced materials, the transient with the enduring and condense some motifs through special cross-fades into tableaus of fluidly merging fragments. Plants, flowers, real, artificial - arranged, combined, disassembled, reassembled - photographed razor-sharp. Silicone, chlorophyll, plastic: material. Tangled strelitzias, callas held together with cable ties, loosely draped blue-white-pink petals of a chrysanthemum on a thin stem ... peeled or cut up apples made of styrofoam ... a Styrofoam skull, cut up, reassembled, fused together. These hybrids raise the question of the extent to which the terms real or artificial still play a role today.

Format:

Photo / Video

Credits
Author:
Claus Stolz
Work:
Chamber Play (2020–today)
Year Created:
2024

Imagine (2023–today)

Imagine (2023–today)

"A picture is worth a thousand words". In my latest series of works, Imagine, I use a text-to-image generator to create images of plants with the look of classy, black-and-white vintage prints. On closer inspection, however, irritation sets in, perhaps even a diffuse unease - on the one hand, there are these beautiful photographs, and on the other, a slight doubt: are these plants really "real"? In some parts, something may not be quite right, but who really knows anything about plants and flowers, especially exotic ones, natural growth or even mutations? It is exactly this ambivalence that this series plays with: Am I as a viewer fascinated or rather repelled? Am I captivated by the fascination of a botanical garden or do I feel a slight creepiness? In the best case: both. In a way, we have come full circle: While Albrecht Dürer, for example, only had descriptions and no photographs available for his famous rhinoceros at the beginning of the modern era, today we have an infinite number of images at our disposal - but I now condense these again via the AI's text input (introduced by "imagine") into individual images, which, like Dürer's woodcut, are also not entirely accurate.

Format:

Photo / Video

Credits
Author:
Claus Stolz
Work:
Imagine (2023–today)
Year Created:
2024

Light-Images (2028–2022)

Light-Images (2028–2022)

My work group of Light-pictures shows old, photographically reproduced photographic plates, whose backside halo protective layer often has a special painterly appearance, which is not visible when processed properly. A material-historical search for traces on plates with names like from 1001 nights: "Chromo Isolar", "Peromnia" or "Pancrosin".

Format:

Photo / Video

Credits
Author:
Claus Stolz
Work:
Light-Images (2028–2022)
Year Created:
2024