Field Guide: Photographs by Jochen Lempert
October 17, 2015–March 6, 2016
Cincinnati Art Museum
953 Eden Park Drive
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–5pm
The first major US museum exhibition featuring German artist Jochen Lempert’s photographs will be on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum from October 17, 2015–March 6, 2016. The show will include more than 100 hand-printed black-and-white photographs spanning 15 years.
Originally trained as a biologist, Lempert began making artistic photographs of animals, plants, and natural phenomena during the early 1990s in Hamburg, Germany. “Lempert’s unique background allows him to depict the world with both scientific rigor and a poetic sensibility,” said Brian Sholis, Cincinnati Art Museum Curator of Photography.
The artist uses both conventional and experimental processes, and the results are anything but traditional nature photography. Out in the field, Lempert uses a 35-mm camera to chart human-animal interactions, the patterns made by birds and insects, or the play of sunlight and shadow. But he also brings the outside world into the studio, making camera-less photograms of leaves and algae or letting bioluminescent species like fireflies expose photographic paper. The exhibition will also include his ongoing 25-year project to document all 80 known taxidermy specimens of the Great Auk, a flightless North Atlantic bird that went extinct in 1844.
Lempert often arranges his images in sequences or grids to highlight similarities, underscore how classification defines what we see, and encourage close looking. The photographs, in a wide variety of sizes, will be placed on the walls unmounted and unframed in an installation devised on-site by the artist and curator.
This survey of Lempert’s photographs includes new work made on the East Coast and in Cincinnati during May 2015. His behind-the-scenes visits to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, the Museum of Natural History & Science at Cincinnati Museum Center, and the Lloyd Library and Museum allowed him to cast new light on these local landmarks.
Field Guide: Photographs by Jochen Lempertis sponsored by PNC Bank and Darlene and Jeffrey R. Anderson. Itwill be on view in Galleries 103, 104 and 105. The exhibition will travel to the Contemporary Art Gallery Vancouver, where it will be on view April 15–June 12, 2016.
About the Cincinnati Art Museum
The Cincinnati Art Museum is supported by the generosity of individuals and businesses that give annually to ArtsWave. The Ohio Arts Council helps fund the Cincinnati Art Museum with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans. The Cincinnati Art Museum gratefully acknowledges operating support from the City of Cincinnati, as well as our members.
Contact
media [at] cincyart.org
