MARKUS
BRUNETTI
FACADES
Cathedrals, Churches, Cloisters in Europe
MAKK
An der Rechtschule, Köln
from 20 August to 14 December 2014
Any observer standing in front of Markus Brunetti’s large photographs immediately senses the quiet grandeur of the pictures – a grandeur defined first of all by the objects themselves, and secondly by the way the artist interprets, configures, and works on them.
More than nine years ago Brunetti began pursuing his passion and set out on a long journey through Europe that is still going on today, capturing the continent’s most famous cathedrals, churches, and cloisters in his photographs.
He not only visits the renowned sacred buildings, such as the large Gothic cathedrals (Cologne, Strassbourg, Reims, etc.), but he also discovers gems such as the village church in Cortegaça, Portugal, shown here with its Azulejos, which he photographed with the same devotion and attention he gives to its more famous “big” sisters.
Brunetti is an enthusiastic “picture maker,” an “inventor of images” who captures and interprets the buildings he photographs in the same way that their builders and architects must have originally imagined them when they first laid out their designs on paper.
Shot from an uncompromising frontal perspective, the solitary objects seem to float, detached from time and their surroundings, bathed in a soft, almost surrealistic light. Viewers can immerse themselves completely in the experience of observing the whole facade, free from the constrictions of the normal low-angle perspective, and without the distractions and diversions stemming from the noise of everyday urban life. One is nearly tempted to try to touch the suddenly visible details in all of their apparent three-dimensionality.
“Facades” is an attempt to create a visual encyclopedia of the many different histories of sacred European architecture through the means of twenty-first-century photography.
FACADES
Cathedrals, Churches, Cloisters in Europe
MAKK
An der Rechtschule, Köln
from 20 August to 14 December 2014
Any observer standing in front of Markus Brunetti’s large photographs immediately senses the quiet grandeur of the pictures – a grandeur defined first of all by the objects themselves, and secondly by the way the artist interprets, configures, and works on them.
More than nine years ago Brunetti began pursuing his passion and set out on a long journey through Europe that is still going on today, capturing the continent’s most famous cathedrals, churches, and cloisters in his photographs.
He not only visits the renowned sacred buildings, such as the large Gothic cathedrals (Cologne, Strassbourg, Reims, etc.), but he also discovers gems such as the village church in Cortegaça, Portugal, shown here with its Azulejos, which he photographed with the same devotion and attention he gives to its more famous “big” sisters.
Brunetti is an enthusiastic “picture maker,” an “inventor of images” who captures and interprets the buildings he photographs in the same way that their builders and architects must have originally imagined them when they first laid out their designs on paper.
Shot from an uncompromising frontal perspective, the solitary objects seem to float, detached from time and their surroundings, bathed in a soft, almost surrealistic light. Viewers can immerse themselves completely in the experience of observing the whole facade, free from the constrictions of the normal low-angle perspective, and without the distractions and diversions stemming from the noise of everyday urban life. One is nearly tempted to try to touch the suddenly visible details in all of their apparent three-dimensionality.
“Facades” is an attempt to create a visual encyclopedia of the many different histories of sacred European architecture through the means of twenty-first-century photography.
