Jürgen Klauke - The Photographic Works
2nd Photography Triennale in Hamburg
April 24 until August 4, 2002

www.klauke-in-hamburg.de

Even as a young avant-garde artist in the early 1970s Jürgen Klauke recognized the pioneering role of photography in art. Since then he has played a major part in the development of the medium by overcoming the traditional documentary aspect and employing photography as an independent medium within visual art.

In historical terms, Jürgen Klauke represents a post-modern stance in his staged photo works and sequences in that he makes himself the object of his observation and assumes fictional identities in order to expose the drama inherent in points of human conflict. For Jürgen Klauke, "using oneself to show the world" is both the impetus behind and the creative objective of his artistic work. He was one of the first artists to put his own body in the centre of his work. In the mid-1970s Klauke carried out his first spectacular performances and actions, many of which, including "Sit Down/Stand Up/I Love You", performed in 1979 in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, attained legendary status.

The exhibition, which was organized in close cooperation with Jürgen Klauke, presents for the first time a representative selection of photo works from every period of Klauke's career from 1970 to the present. New pieces made especially for the exhibition round off the show's retrospective character.

The exhibition is a cooperation between the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn, the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and the Hamburg Kunsthalle.

A catalogue has been published to accompany the exhibition containing essays by internationally renowned authors such as Peter Weibel, Uwe M. Schneede, Elisabeth Bronfen, Diedrich Diedrichsen and Slavoj Zizek, and around 950 illustrations. It is available from the museum shop, priced € 50.
The exhibition was supported in Hamburg by British American Tobacco, Germany. MSBK Proximity supports the exhibition with following website http://www.klauke-in-hamburg.de