Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg is pleased to announce BECHER / OPIE, a paired presentation of work by the photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher and Catherine Opie. This exhibition inaugurates Collection Room, a program of special rotating displays of works drawn from the Hall Collection open to visitors via special tour opportunities. The Collection Room series opens with concurrent presentations of work by Franz West and Peter Dreher.

 

Collaborating artists Bernd and Hilla Becher (b. Siegen, 1931-2007; b. Potsdam, 1934-2015) are celebrated for their grouped photographs of industrial structures taken across Europe and America, often grouped in ‘typologies.’ The couple met as students at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and began working together in 1959. Influenced by the German art movement Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), their sited photographs of power plants, mills and factories documented industrial structures in danger of decline. Guided by a rigorous formal aptitude, the Bechers arranged their photographs in galleries and in books to invite comparison between structures. Their grid arrangements resulted in a new kind of photography of geographically dispersed but similar subjects across decades. This installation includes key examples from their career, including images of lime kilns in the Netherlands, and winding towers in Great Britain, Germany, France, and the United States.

 

Now based in Los Angeles, Catherine Opie (b. 1961, Ohio) is celebrated for examining American identity and community through the traditional genres of landscape and portraiture. Though Opie works simultaneously between the two, this presentation focuses on the landscapes, drawing examples from foundational series including Freeways, Mini-Malls, American Cities, and Lake Michigan. Her work honors the technical aptitude and conceptual curiosity of the Bechers’, but also draws from American photographers like Walker Evans, expanding from rigorous formal principles to underscore social class issues. While Opie’s work subverts serial photography, her subjective approach is explored through changes in scale and perspective, as well as the occasional embrace of color and abstraction.

 

For more information and images, please contact the Hall Art Foundation’s administrative office at info@hallartfoundation.org.

 

 

We offer free public guided tours and special guided tours for selected exhibitions.