Berge (Mountains)
The two completely different works of Sandro Livio Straube and Zak van Biljon can be found in the double exhibition "BERGE". For both photographers, the mountains are a very big part of your life, but they encounter and also implement in different ways.
With Zak van Biljon it is a new way of looking at nature. The increasing urbanization of mankind today ends once and for all our symbiotic relationship with nature. Cities are growing into mega-cities, more than half of today's population was born in cities, and this new generation is a technological generation focused on convenience, but: without nature. And yet: humanity can never free itself from nature.
The vivid pinks and reds in Zak van Biljon's work will therefore attract those neon city dwellers who believe they have overcome nature, yet are subconsciously reminded of the nature out there. His art wants the viewer to remember the real landscape when looking at the supposedly unreal world of his photographs.
The series by Sandro Livio Straube shows places in the Val Lumnezia, away from tourism and pure infra-structure, that are simply still allowed to be. Without claims to meaning and purpose for the masses. The pure unpretentiousness in itself - At first sight. Because they need great attention for the seemingly invisible. Things that seem trivial to us at first glance and only communicate something far deeper upon closer and more intense observation. Only that there are no physical figures present to tell the story. Thus, the absence of humans in such places can evoke the feeling of being observed. Be it a dark window, the veiling curtain behind the glass, or thick tree trunks surrounding one - the unknown leads to new ideas, stories and new beliefs and ends in new images. From the initial shy glimmering, one's own and crystal clear radiance opens up.