Sebastian Riemer

Sebastian Riemer (b. 1982, Oberhausen) studied photography at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 2002 to 2010 with Christopher Williams and was a master student of Thomas Ruff. In his work, he takes a conceptual approach to questioning authorship and the originality of photography.

 

In his ‘Press Paintings’ series, he uses retouched press photographs to reveal the process of image economy.

For the Griffelkunst edition, he created the series ‘Ross & Reiter’, which depicts jockeys and other professional riders with their horses. The photographs were taken in the 1930s for coverage of horse races, rodeos or other equestrian events. The photos served purely as print templates, and were treated as such. Anything that didn’t fit was made to fit, through overpainting, cropping, cut-out lines and other manual interventions in the image. Distinctive details were perceived as distracting and fell victim to retouching; for example, the fact that the horses were held by stablehands for the shot, who, unlike the jockeys, often had black skin. Riemer has reduced the photographs to their essentials and stripped them of their historicity.

 

“In the overpainted press photographs, various pictorial traditions and techniques now collide, which can be described as rivals on the racecourse of art: painting and photography. Steffen Siegel writes on this in his text on the Press Paintings: ‘Riemer’s interest lies in an intermedia interplay that unfolds between photography and painting, thus relating images produced both mechanically and manually to one another.’ This gives rise to a kind of ‘open puzzle, of being able to be both at the same time’. When viewing the works, one focuses either on the painterly aspects of the images or on the photography that lies, as it were, behind them. In doing so, Riemer prompts reflection on what photographic images reveal and what they conceal—that is, on the very framework of photography in general. He also addresses the possibilities of manipulation, not in the sense of deception, but as part of the entirely normal handling of photographs within an image economy in which they are created not as an art form, but for practical use." Stephanie Bunk

 

Riemer had the prints produced at Recom Art Berlin in (almost) the same way as they were created 100 years ago. What is new are the digital pre-production stages: the original negatives were scanned and the resulting files minimally processed by the artist. Large-format negatives were produced from these files, which were then used to produce analogue prints on baryta photographic paper. Brought to a high gloss through the final drying process, the result is technically and visually very close to the originals. Not quite, however, as Riemer has deliberately chosen to reproduce the motifs on a larger scale and reduced to shades of grey. Through the conceptual decision to transfer the edited and colour-shifted black-and-white photographs back to the original technique in which they were once created, the images lack more than just a nostalgic touch. All image editing is also levelled out and transferred from the manual to the photographic realm.

 

 

Horse & Rider, 2022