Florian Maier-Aichen - Contemporary Evening Sale London Sunday, July 5, 2009 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Blum & Poe, Los Angeles

  • Exhibited

    New York, Hunter College, The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery, to: Night, 12 Sept  - 6 Dec, 2008 (another example exhibited)

  • Literature

    Vitamin Ph New Perspective in Photography, Phaidon Press Inc., 2006. p 170 (illustrated); D. Balice, 'La Verite Si Je Mens', MIXTE, No. 40, June - July 2006, p 48 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    Florian Maier-Aichen is not simply a photographer. He is alchemist, combining the traits of a painter, sculptor and performer. Encompassing a diverse range of technical approaches,his oeuvre is the result of an involved process which demonstrates that the art of photography is much more than the automatic motion of pressing a button. Nothing is what it seems in his evocative, unpopulated, large-scale images. Home-made cameras,set design, digital mastery, and over exposure are but a few of the staple techniques in Maier-Aichen's working method. Bringing a painter's and draftman's eye to the practice of photography, Florian Maier-Aichen builds upon and questions the long tradition of the landscape as an artistic genre. In the current lot the viewer is presented with a monochromatic mountainous nocturnal scene.The composition is framed by the branches of pine trees along the outer side edges of the foreground with the Mojave desert visible in the background along the flats of the Anteloppe Valley. A van Gogh like starry sky caps the sublime,surreal nightscape.The vantage point is unanchored; the elevated field of view disturbs the viewer's sense of space. Extended viewing of Maier-Aichen's photographs enables one to see that, to the artist, subject matter is nothing but a pretence to push the boundaries of this still comparatively young medium.When confronted by the post production synthetic beauty of Maier-Aichen's monumental landscapes one questions their perception of photography and the validity of the images one consumes.
     

8

Untitled

2004
C- print.
122 x 155 cm. (48 x 60 1/2 in).
Signed and dated 'Florian Maier - Aichen 2004' on a label adhered to the reverse. This work is from an edition of six plus two artist's proofs.

Estimate
£30,000 - 40,000 ≠♠†

Sold for £51,650

Contemporary Evening Sale

29 June 2009, 7pm
London