Lothar Baumgarten

The work of the internationally renowned artist Lothar Baumgarten has focused since the late 1960s on themes such as the oppositions of culture / nature and self / other. Measure and proportion, materiality and ratio, light, color and time are the elements determining our perception of his works. Freed from cultural contexts, its universal appearance, identity, and presence are formulated by means of its intellectual and personal poetics. It argues from the materiality of found circumstances, and through its intuitive manipulated new settings. The personal grammar of its gesture and point of view on the world mobilizes all-encompassing reflections, while the intensity of what is formulated affords us access to the identity of what we are looking at. A discourse of engagement opens up, a readiness to get involved, that at the same time completes the work. Self-reflection, along with invention, is what guides here the documentary eye of the photo-graphic language in the photographic image. An emphasis on grasping what a site is all about, on the “sense of place,” is characteristic for Baumgarten’s work.

Lothar Baumgarten’s work has been presented all over the world in solo exhibitions at major museums and shown at venues including the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, MACBA (2008); Dallas Museum of Art, Texas (2004); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2003); Hamburger Kunsthalle (2001); Kunsthaus Zurich (1998); Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris (1995); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1993); Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (1991); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1990); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main (1990); Kunsthalle Bern (1987); RC/ Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1986); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1985); 41st Venice Biennale, German Pavilion (with A.R. Penck), Venice (1984); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (1982); documenta, Kassel (1972, 1982, 1992, 1997). The Folkwang Museum Essen displays Fragmento Brasil / Vom Ursprung der Tischsitten (1971-2005) as part of its permanent collection.