Werner Pawlok
Werner Pawlok (born 1953 in Stuttgart) is a German artist and photographer known for his celebrity and art photography, especially for his work with the 20×24-inch Polaroid Camera.
[10][11] From Pawlok's experimental handling of processes, techniques and image carrier media emerges a pictorial style that doesn't need visual reference within reality.
A large format Polaroid, which is transferred through a complex process to a heavy, rough-textured hand made paper or canvas, produces the image.
Their materiality reminds one of an artistic principle of modernity which doesn't make use of pictorial means solely in order to express, but elevates them to be the purpose themselves.
[12][13] In 1990 he began with his cycle "Stars & Paints" a series of one hundred 20×24-inch unique Polaroids of celebrities including Sir Peter Ustinov, John Malkovich, Roman Polanski, Dizzy Gillespie, Jean Paul Gaultier, Juliette Binoche and Jane Birkin.
Maybe it is even the pleasure of a hide-and-seek game that tempts these people, whom we admire so much, to engage in the set that Werner Pawlok provides and that drives Pedro Almodóvar, director and connoisseur of the women, to "quote himself" or that causes John Malkovich, the ghost-lighting chameleon amongst the Hollywood actors, to reveal parts of his innermost self in front of this seemingly archaic camera.
[14][15] In May 1992 Edition Domberger, published under the patronage of King Juan Carlos of Spain, and documenta IX, the edition COLUMBUS - IN SEARCH OF A NEW TOMORROW, featured the work of 37 artists including Joseph Beuys, Max Bill, Sandro Chia, Eduardo Chillida, Christo, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Longo, Antoni Tàpies and more.
He does not illustrate the selected cantos, he rather conceptualises visionary image metaphors which reflect Dante's verses with a resolute gesture but still develop their own vocabulary.
On Pawloks transparent Cibachrome the image appears boosted, dynamic: a fervent maelstrom has seized its personnel and keeps it banished; on the other hand, the Catharsis Mountain exudes an ethereal fluidity which reminds us of the path of light which the poet walks on in his phantastic journey.
Pawloks version is not trying to comment on the verses but seeks creative inspiration, an associative method that leads to precise image settings, which add themselves to an open series without joining a cohesive cycle.
2001 Pawlok participated in the exhibition tour Images beyond the Naked Eye, together with Duane Michals, Robert Lebeck, Sarah Moon, Sebastião Salgado and others.
[19] 2002 Pawlok started his portrait cycle of "Views - Faces of Literature", a series of writers like, Martin Walser, T. C. Boyle, Henning Mankell, Amos Oz, Jonathan Franzen, Richard Ford, Salman Rushdie, Ian Rankin, Ken Follett, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Ian McEwan, Michael Ondaatje, Siri Hustvedt, Leon de Winter, Jeffrey Eugenides and more.
For the black and white pictures, which were mostly made in the style of street photography the processing creates an irritation that gives the viewer the opportunity to mentally return to the old Venice.
2020 - 2023 Greenhouses - Cathedrals for Plants [28] "Entering these wonderful glass palaces and being able to explore their green-scented, tropical interior with my camera felt like an expedition into the heart of the 19th century.Sometimes the plant forms, the deep shadows of the arching leaves of palm and tropical trees, led me up into the clear heightd of the glass roofs, whose constructions themselves acted like a capillary of leaf veins and translucent fibers of light."
