Stéphane Couturier
The large-scale photographs by the contemporary photographer Stéphane Couturier are never committed to representing the purely factual. They also create a new, image-immanent order of things: Through the superposition of two different images of the same place, the artist creates intensely colored to almost abstract works. His works, which have more in common with the definition of contemporary painting as color, line and surface than with traditional notions of photography as a document, are characterized by dynamic verticals and horizontals, elegantly curving lines and brilliant effects of light and color.
On the occasion of the European Month of Photography, Galerie Kornfeld presents Stéphane Couturier (born 1957), one of France’s most important contemporary photographers.
Stéphane Couturier’s work explores a world shaped by architecture. Modern architecture—such as buildings designed by Le Corbusier or Oscar Niemeyer—high-tech industrial interiors and exteriors, the ruins of modernity, and the dynamic construction sites of contemporary cities form the central motifs of his photographs.
Couturier’s large-scale works are never confined to purely factual representation. Instead, they generate a new, image-immanent order. By superimposing two different images of the same location, the artist creates intensely coloured, near-abstract compositions. His works share more with contemporary painting—understood as colour, line and surface—than with traditional documentary photography. They are characterised by dynamic vertical and horizontal structures, elegant curving lines, and brilliant effects of light and colour.
The exhibition presents a focused selection of recent works. Images that transform sites of modern industrial production into abstract compositions are shown alongside works that isolate carefully chosen details from buildings by Le Corbusier or from the façades of anonymous mass architecture, opening poetic spaces of colour. A video work—showing a seemingly endless sequence of subtly varied façades accompanied by floating, meditative music—adds an additional dimension to the photographic works.
Hannah Linder | Dr. Tilman Treusch
