Everything’s gonna be alright mother

Daniel Josefsohn
Everything’s gonna be alright mother
1 May – 30 May 2010

Opening: Friday, 30 April 2010, 7 pm

Der Kunstverein, since 1817.
Klosterwall 23
20095 Hamburg
Germany

www.kunstverein.de

Blurring the borders between art, design and fashion photography, Daniel Josefsohn’s works capture the spirit of a generation that playfully mixes media and styles creating a very individual language for its environment and way of life. But the unique nature of his work lies in the cracks in the surface. Although his pictures are aesthetically pleasing and well-composed, their glossy surfaces conceal an altogether darker, deeper and unspoken level. A good example is his picture of a middle-class residence in the German countryside. The architecture, the little garden and the curtains in the window are all innocuous enough. However this is the scene of the “Cannibal of Rothenburg” case, a crime that shocked the world. It is precisely this conflict between an aesthetically pleasing surface and the history or events that are associated with it that gives the pictures their disconcerting and decidedly political edge.

Whether the subject is right-wing extremism in Germany or the Middle East conflict, Josefsohn invariably finds unusual motifs and unsettling scenes. His series “Jewing Gun” portrays young Israeli soldiers. The photographs are characterised by the contrasts between military uniforms and small accessories like sunglasses, which make the whole series resemble a fashion spread for a magazine. In fact, what the accessories actually do is show the hue of personality the soldiers have tried to bring to their regulation clothing. Josefsohn does not capture his subjects like an impartial bystander, but as a highly conscious observer who eschews the repetitive stereotypes we so often see in the media.

Daniel Josefsohn was born in 1961 and currently lives in Berlin. Since 1995 he has been working as a freelance photographer for numerous magazines. He first came to public attention with a series of black-and-white portraits of youngsters, which he took for an MTV campaign. Alongside his photographs and photo essays, Josefsohn also makes films and actual products. For example, through the artist group Elternhaus he was involved in the production of the “MoslBuddJewChristHinDao” fragrance, which was launched as a campaign for world peace. The fragrance itself was created by Mark Buxton, while Josefsohn developed the idea, the bottle, the packaging and the advertising campaign. In 2010 he received the Lead Award in gold for the best advertisement campaign of the year “Half Wild, Half Child” designed for the fashion label Herr von Eden. The first institutional solo exhibition at Kunstverein Hamburg presents a wide range of his works.

This exhibition opens a series of changing solo presentations at Kunstverein Hamburg, followed by: Tobias Zielony, Michael Riedel, Hank Schmidt in der Beek and Peter Sempel.

The Kunstverein is funded by Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg Behörde für Kultur, Sport und Medien.