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In conjunction with The Gates: Project for Central Park,
the Chelsea Art Museum is pleased to present

ManMade Planet
Photographs by Wolfgang Volz

Documenting the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

CURATED BY PETER PACHNICKE

The first retrospective of Wolfgang Volz's works in the US,
including 30 large-scale color photos and 80 black and white photos.

January 28– March 1, 2005

Opening Reception: Friday, January 28, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Wolfgang Volz, Christo and Jeanne-Claude will be present

Tuesday, March 1, 7–9pm

Round Table with Wolfgang Volz

An exhibition by LudwigGalerie Schloss Oberhausen with the support of the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation

	Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Wrapped Trees , Beyeler Foundation and Berower Park, Riehen/Schweiz 1997-98, 1998

ManMade Planet is the first US retrospective dedicated to the photographer Wolfgang Volz. For the first time ever we are able to view Volz’s large-scale landscape portraits of America, Asia, and Europe in a single exhibition. Volz’s landscape photos are presented in a fascinating dialogue alongside his famous pictures of the legendary land-art projects by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

“Wolfgang Volz,” writes Werner Spies, is "the eye of Christo and Jeanne Claude." His photographs have timelessly captured works created for a specific moment in history, and his images vividly portray the utopian spirit of the works. Through Volz’s spectacular photos viewers are able to revisit Christo and Jeanne-Claude's monumental projects. In large-format color photographs Volz catches the magic of metamorphosis where an entirely new landscape is created. Volz reveals the moment where a weighty historic symbol, or a group of trees, is suddenly sparkling in its wrapping like a crystalline topography of glaciers, transformed into a peaceful point of attraction for people from all over the world.

By wrapping and concealing Christo and Jeanne-Claude draw our attention to the riches of both nature and culture. In these works the artists are dealing simultaneously with manipulating and preserving the landscape. Volz’s documentation in 1998 of "wrapped trees" at Fondation Beyeler in Basel takes us back to a primeval element of landscape imagery. Volz shows the trees in a changing light, spun with cloth like transparent cocoons. By shooting against the light, he makes us sensitive to their miraculous inner realms where branches and twigs invoke arteries in a microscopic organism. Here Volz has depicted the gossamer-like structure of nature's driving forces in the most subtle way imaginable.

Wolfgang Volz regards landscape photography as an attempt to use photography in an archaeological fashion, to demonstrate that the great majority of the surface of our planet has been shaped by mankind. The title of the exhibition, "ManMade Planet" was conceived by Wolfgang Volz himself. Within this concept impressive views of Manhattan skyscrapers are juxtaposed with the stone circles of Callanish, and needle-like rock formations in the American south-west. Whereas the primeval stone circles in Scotland blend organically into the landscape, the urban and industrial topographies of our age demonstrate mankind's self-glorifying attempt to elevate itself above nature. The cultivation of the land means that mankind is able to protect and preserve nature but also to regulate, subjugate, and damage it. Whether man-made or natural – from ancient monolithic standing stones and modern skyscrapers to natural cliffs and rocks created by nature over the course of centuries – they have all been photographed exquisitely.

wolfgangvolz.com

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