Gabriele Engelhardt

The combination of sculpture and photography is at the centre of the multi-part series of works raw_material by artist Gabriele Engelhardt. It impressively shows how bulk materials - industrial raw materials and recycled materials - are transformed into photographic sculptures. These raw materials are stored in large piles in port and recycling areas and are constantly moved and shaped in the process of delivery and onward transport. The sculptress and photographer observes this process, which is subject to an economic logic, with an aesthetic eye. She digitally composes the large-format images from up to one hundred individual shots, so that several perspectives of one and the same "mountain" are always combined in one image. This multi-perspectivity and a sharpness of detail that would not be possible without the sculptress' view of the photographic raw material. This explains the haunting presence and monumental grandeur in which the individual "mountains" appear in the picture.