Hans Hansen, O. T. (self-portrait), 2002, free work © Hans Hansen

BERLIN.- C/O Berlin is presenting the exhibition entitled 'Still Life' by Hans Hansen from July 13th to September 10th, 2017. 

A VW Golf, built in 1988, finely neat and divided into just under 7,000 individual parts, graphically arranged glass blocks, the shading of a flower or a Japanese wooden mask - Hans Hansen's view of things is greatly reduced, linear and at the same time full of energy.He always treats industrially-produced products, natural things and craftsmanship with the same precision and dedication. Technical accuracy and graphic minimalism give the objects a visual life. Hardly any other photographer of his profession has shaped our perception of the everyday world of things as decisively as Hans Hansen since the 1960s. 

Hansen was one of the first photographers to set new aesthetic standards in both free and applied photography, Both fields with equal rights. In 1968, he dismantled a dismantled beetle for the well-known Volkswagen campaign of the New York agency Doyle Dane Bernbach. In the end of the 1980s, he reintroduced this project with a golf commissioned by VW. With this work he gained international recognition and linked for the first time advertising photography with fine art and design. Hans Hansen prefers to "unlearn" things. His pictures are always radically isolated and perfectly illuminated - this is the program of Hansen. Regardless of whether he photographed products for Porsche, Erco or Vitra, he always order, structure and comprehensively compare the shape, colors and material of the objects. In addition, his photographs are often developed in the positive-negative process.  

Hans Hansen, o.T. (Nikonobjektive), 1984, Hildmann Simon Rempen & Schmitz © Hans Hansen

The continuous use of materials such as glass and water led to commissioning of Tapio Wirkkala to the photosequence of glass water in which he related the two organic substances pictorially. Hansen's black-and-white shots of hair, twill-folds and slingers, as well as his color photographs of vegetables, fruits or plant models, visualize his fascination for the materiality of the individual objects. Hans Hansen's typically minimalist light dramaturgy, from which he often forms graphic formations and creates unique architectures, characterizes his artistic approach. While he settled his commissioned works in the field of applied photography, He has been devoting himself more and more to the free studio photography and likes to describe it as an experimental field and creative scope. A play with form and light in which he points the naturo objects and human artefacts.

With the exhibition Hans Hansen. Still Life, C / O Berlin dedicates a work show to the German photographer's diverse work, which deals with both its free and applied work. The selection gives an insight into the material, material and sensual quality of his objects, as well as in the production of technical and technical images, and through the visualization of the subject photographs of industrial, craft and natural objects.  

The exhibition was curated by Felix Hoffmann and Hendrik Schwantes. A publication by Spector Books, Leipzig with texts by Hartmut Böhme, Hannes Böhringer, Falk Haberkorn, Axel Kufus, Juhani Pallasmaa and Anna Voswinckel will be published.  

Hans Hansen, o.T. (Hair), 1987, free work © Hans Hansen