MESSE
They are temporary architectures – stage sets captured by Wendelin Bottländer in his series MESSE. In the early 1980s he was out with his 35mm camera at trade fairs where industries presented their products and visions: at the Equitana horse fair in Essen, the Haus & Garten fair, Drupa (printing and paper), the plastics fair and EuroShop in Düsseldorf, at the Anuga food fair in Cologne, or at the Hannover industrial fair. The 22 photographs depict temporary spaces built into vast halls, decorated with flowerpots and tablecloths or designed in a sober, representative manner.

Whether tanning systems, supermarket checkout systems, product displays for corn cobs or leather shavings for upholstered sofas – at the industrial and consumer fairs of West Germany industry representatives met under suspended ceilings to do business. The women wear colorful dresses, the men gray jackets, white shirts, ties, and mustaches. It is a bygone era, preserved as if under glass.

Wendelin Bottländer’s photography reveals a sense for the interplay of people, architecture, and typography. His images are a stage of signs, where logos, colors, hostesses, uniforms, and products interlock. Bottländer wields the camera like a director, framing and condensing the hectic everyday life of the trade fair. He choreographs the gaze and turns incidental situations into scenes.

Wendelin Bottländer, born in Cologne in 1959, studied photography at the Folkwang School in Essen with Otto Steinert, Erich vom Endt, and Willy Fleckhaus (1977–1983), and from 1979 to 1988 at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Bernd Becher and Nam June Paik. In Essen, he was influenced by Otto Steinert’s ‘Subjektive Fotografie’ as well as the visual language of magazine photography, in Düsseldorf by Becher’s typological working method. These two influences – expanded by New Color Photography in the USA – continue to shape his work today. This transatlantic connection was highlighted in 2010 by the exhibition Der Rote Bulli at the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, in which Bottländer was represented. There, the dialogue between Stephen Shore and the Bechers was identified as central to Düsseldorf photography – an environment in which Bottländer’s work also finds its place.

The exhibition brings together the two series MESSE and HINTERHOF.

Mit freundlicher Unterstützung:
With the kind support of the Cultural Office of the City of Düsseldorf