Rosier Gallery is pleased to present the large-scale color photographs in Michael Schnabel's Stille Berge series from March 28 - June 25, 2013. These 41 images were captured at night in the Alps during 2003 - 2010. The artist's work has been featured in several books, including the Edition Braus published "Stille Berge" in 2004 and the High Quality Innovations published "Michael Schnabel 2001 - 2010" in 2011. This exhibit marks the first time Rosier Gallery has shown Michael Schnabel's photographs.
Stille Berge, or "Silent Mountains" in German, reflects Michael Schnabel's quest to visually depict a quiet solitude in the mountains he loves. The artist explains that, "Photographing the Alps in my own vision was a creative process that developed over years. One day -- or night rather -- it clicked. Under the dark skies I found the tranquility that the Alps of today lack during the day. The night and its silence gives the mountains a sublimity, feeling of raw creation and aloofness that I strived to capture in my work."
The artist began conceiving of these images within the environment of German photographers like Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth creating work saturated in grays. Stille Berge represents a fulfillment of Michael Schnabel's quest to push photograph toward painting and finding heavier, darker tones more intriguing, ultimately toward the pursuit of investigating photography without light. How dark can you go? For a long time, his efforts didn't work. But ultimately, his pursuit reached fruition within the mountains, long a symbolic representation of human striving.
The framed art object of a Stille Berge image exhibits a dramatic richness and texture unseen in an image viewed online or in a magazine. The striking depth of these works is revealed by presenting the work without glass. While the surface is fragile, this presentation manner is crucial to the viewer's response to the work. With the glass barrier removed, we dive into the image, striving ourselves to visualize the Stille Berge object as a dual artistic asymptote, both approaching but not becoming an image without light and a painting while remaining a photograph.
Michael Schnabel's work has been widely exhibited internationally including over 18 solo museum and gallery shows and over 60 group shows. Earlier in 2013, photographs from the Stille Berge series were featured in a solo museum show at Kunsthaus Wiesbaden, Germany. The artist's work has earned numerous awards, including most recently the BRITA Art prize 2012, the PDN annual award in the same year and the silver German Photobook Award 2013. The Tyrol State Museum commissioned five Stille Berge works in 2010. Michael Schnabel was born in 1966 and lives with his family in Southern Germany.
Rosier Gallery specializes in contemporary photography by representing outstanding mid-career and emerging photographers and presenting exceptional images from the world's most renowned photo-based artists through the secondary market. We strive to introduce collectors and corporations around the world to photographers who create visually unique, compelling images that raise issues in a thought-provoking, nuanced manner. Rosier Gallery has served clients around the world, including in Europe, South America and the Middle East, and across the United States, including in California, New York, Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Minnesota and Ohio, and corporations including Microsoft and Time-Warner.