Elger Esser

Born 1967, lives and works in Dusseldorf

Fort Louvois, 2014
direct print on silver coated copper plate, shellac, framed
47 x 62 x 5 cm

Elger Esser

Born 1967, lives and works in Dusseldorf

Elger Esser © Nicolas Cattelain

Curriculum Vitae

1967 Born in Stuttgart / DE
1969–1986 Elementary school and bachelor in Italy
1996 Masters of Fine art
2006–2009 Professor at Staatlichen Hochschule für Gestaltung (section Medienkunst), Karlsruhe / DE
Currently Lives and works in Düsseldorf / DE

Grants and awards

2016 Oskar-Schlemmer-Preis
2010 Rheinischer Kunstpreis
2001 Deutsches Studienzentrum Venedig
1998 Förderpreis für Bildende Kunst der Stadt Düsseldorf.
DAAD-Reisestipendium „Italien“

Solo Exhibitions (selected)

2023 "Das stille Sein", Van der Grinten Galerie, Köln, DE
"Le Lys dans la Vallée", Fondation des Artistes, Rotonde Balzac, Hotel Salomon de Rothschild, Paris, FR
"Aestus I", Galerie Kewenig, Pied-à-terre, Berlin-Charllottenburg, DE
"Photographies sur cuivre par Elger Esser", Musée d'art moderne de Fontevraud, FR
2022 "Silberblumen", FLOWERS, Hong Kong
2021 "Elger Esser. So far yet so close", Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney / AUS
2020 "Grey Le Gray", Van der Grinten Galerie, Cologne / DE
"En somme, j'ai vu de l'eau, du soleil, des nuages...", Musée de la Mer, Ile Sainte Marguerite, Cannes / FR (June 26 – Oct. 25, 2020)
"Entre temps et durée", Galerie RX, Paris / FR Nov. 2019 – Jan. 2020
2019 "De Sérignant à Giverny", Tour46, Belfort / FR
"L’autre côte du vent", Elger Esser and Felix Schramm, Kunsthaus Lempertz, Brussels / BE
"Morgenland", Fondation Fernet Branca, Saint-Louis / FR
2018 “Paysages intimes”, Van der Grinten Galerie, Cologne / DE
2017 “El tiempo en suspenso”, Patio Herreriano, Valladolid
nov / ESP
"Le Nil sur la Loire", Chateau de Chaumont, Domaine Chaumont sur Loire / FR
"Elger Esser - Aetas", Landesgalerie im Landesmuseum, Linz / AU
2016 "zeitigen", Oskar Schlemmer State Prize, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe / DE
"From Shivta to Lifta", Loushy Art & Projects, Tel Aviv / ISR
2015 "Nocturnes à Giverny, Photographies de Elger Esser", Festival Normandie Impressionniste, Galerie Photo du Pôle Image Haute-Normandie, Rouen / FR
2014 The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Tampa / USA
"L’âge d’or", Galerie Kewenig, Berlin/ DE
2012 "Stille Wellen", Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Oldenburg / DE
2011 "Lichte Weite", LVR-LandesMuseum, Bonn / DE
2010 Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem / NL
2009 "Eigenzeit", Kunstmuseum Stuttgart [ / DE
2008 "Französische Landschaften 1990–2008", FO.KU.S – Foto Kunst Stadtforum, Innsbruck / AU
1999 Sonnabend Gallery, New York / USA
1998 Kunstverein Siegen, Siegen / D
E
1997 Kunstverein Hagen, Hagen / D
E
1995 Kulturbahnhof Eller, Düsseldorf / D
E

Group Exhibitions (selected)

2023 "Transformationen: Material & Auflösung", Van der Grinten Galerie, Köln
"Rembrandt en Eau forte with Elger Esser Landscapes", Abbaye de Fontevraud / FR
"Au Milieu des Terres – En carnet de voyages en Méditerranée", Espace Cultural Départemental, Aix-en-Provence / FR
"Landscapes, Florenz & Istanbul", Stiftung Museum Schloss Moyland / DE
"Rosenrot, Grasgrün, Quittengelb", Kunsthalle Würth, Schwäbisch Hall / DE
"Landscape and Psyche", Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney
2022 "Earth: A Retrospective. El Ultimo Grito I La Collecció Per Amor A L’art", Bombas Gens Centre d’Art València, ES
"Fantastic Visions", AMoA, Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo / USA
"Une histoire de famille", Collection(s) Robelin, Musée d‘Art Contemporain Lyon, FR
"Belonging", The Hunt Museum, Limerick / IE
2021 COLECCIÓN JUMEX: TEMPERATURA AMBIENTE Fundacion Museo Jumex, Mexico City / MX
2020 BLUE, Loushy Art & Projects Tel Aviv / ISR
Sammlung Würth, Die Inszenierung der Natur in Werken der Sammlung Würth, Chur/ CH
The Sonnabend Collection, Remai Modern, Saskatoon / CA
2019 "L’invention d’un monde – Photographies des collections Robelin", FRAC – Auvergne, Clermont Ferrand /FR
"Zwischen Nähe und Distanz: Konstruktion von Wirklichkeiten. Von Goya bis Picasso", Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf / DE
2018 "The Moment is Eternity – Works from the Olbricht Collection", me Collectors Room Berlin / DE
"Light Sensitive 2 – Photography from the Schaufler Collection", Schauwerk Sindelfingen / DE
"As Far as the Eye Can See", Museum Würth, Künzelsau / DE
2017 "Wiesenstück", Van der Grinten Galerie, Köln/ DE
"Luther und die Avantgarde. Zeitgenössische Kunst in Wittenberg, Berlin und Kasse", Altes Gefängnis, Wittenberg / DE
"Water, Clouds, Wind", Kunsthalle Würth, Schwäbisch Hall / DE
2016 "Langmatt, Licht, Libellen - Impressionismus heute?", Museum Langmatt, Baden, Austria
"Aus der Sammlung: Landschaft. Landesgalerie Linz", Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Linz / AU
"Der typologische Blick – Ausstellung für Hilla Becher.", Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung für Kultur, Cologne / DE
"I Prefer Life. Reydan Weiss Collection." Exhibition on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Weserburg, Bremen / DE
"WALD", Van der Grinten Galerie, Cologne / DE
"Gärten der Welt". Museum Rietberg, Zurich, Switzerland
"Monets Gärten. Zeitgenössische Fotografien", Schloss Eutin / CH
"Viehof Collection", Deichtorhallen, Hamburg / DE
2015 "Photographing Monet's Gardens: Five Contemporary Views", Musée des Impressionismes Giverny, Giverny / FR
"Faszination Fotografie", Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg / AU
"Landscape in my Mind - Landscape photography today", Kunstforum Wien, Vienna / AU

Elger Esser

Das stille Sein

November 18, 2023

 — 

January 28, 2024

Das stille Sein (The Stillness of Being) is the third Elger Esser solo exhibition at the Van der Grinten Galerie. We are pleased to present a selection of his latest works, the result of his explorations in the north of France. At different times of the day and year he photographed Mont-Saint-Michel, ebb and flow in the tidal flats, the coastline and, farther inland, the landscapes along the course of the Loire in which the river is embedded.

For 30 years, Elger Esser has travelled the regions of France searching for archetypical landscapes. In his most recent works the experience of landscape concentrates on the transition from the coastline to the sea and on up into the sky above, with its spectacle of changing cloud formations. The possibilities offered by the techniques that Esser himself has developed have clearly provided a strong impetus for his artistic development: a direct pigment printing process is used to transfer the analog photography images to silver-plated copper plates, which are then coated with shellac and mounted in specially designed frames, so that the finished work appears to be an organic hybrid of painting and photography. The metallic foundation layer amplifies the photographically captured light and its play of reflections in the sky and water, significantly intensifying the radiance of the colors. This element of depth and vitality inherent in the picture is heightened by the viewer’s own movement in front of the work, as both light and colors seem to change with a shifting perspective. The result is a perfect congruity of the portrayal and the portrayed.

The landscapes of Elger Esser emanate an overwhelming presence, yet the images are most often of inconspicuous places. He is intent on  distilling a landscape down to its essence. A recurring theme in the artist’s work is the interconnection of nature with testaments of building culture, but in such a way that the motifs exist in a realm devoid of chronological or spatial markers, giving rise to something universal and timeless. It is from this vantage point that Esser views the stupendous silhouette of Mont-Saint-Michel, which has rested for a millennium in the breathtakingly beautiful tidal seascape, as a symbol of the experience of the immanence of things. 

Why does watching the setting and rising of the sun hold human beings the world over in its thrall? Perhaps because we find in this natural phenomenon a clearly visible manifestation of beauty, an otherwise so abstract and often controversial concept, perhaps also because it gives the individual a feeling of belonging to the world, to a great, incomprehensible whole. To view the beauty of the landscape in the wonder of the light is to take pause and marvel, to be still and to feel and hear one’s own inner self in the stillness of being. It is to access a profound level, a space in which the enigmas of existence lie hidden, far from the loud and hectic constraints of daily life.

Elger Esser was born in 1967 in Stuttgart and grew up in Rome. From 1991 to 1997 he studied with Bernd Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Esser’s work is represented in the following museum collections, among others: Guggenheim Museum New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Kunsthaus Zürich, Centre Pompidou Paris, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus Munich, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Elger Esser

Das stille Sein

November 18, 2023

 — 

January 28, 2024

Das stille Sein (The Stillness of Being) is the third Elger Esser solo exhibition at the Van der Grinten Galerie. We are pleased to present a selection of his latest works, the result of his explorations in the north of France. At different times of the day and year he photographed Mont-Saint-Michel, ebb and flow in the tidal flats, the coastline and, farther inland, the landscapes along the course of the Loire in which the river is embedded.

For 30 years, Elger Esser has travelled the regions of France searching for archetypical landscapes. In his most recent works the experience of landscape concentrates on the transition from the coastline to the sea and on up into the sky above, with its spectacle of changing cloud formations. The possibilities offered by the techniques that Esser himself has developed have clearly provided a strong impetus for his artistic development: a direct pigment printing process is used to transfer the analog photography images to silver-plated copper plates, which are then coated with shellac and mounted in specially designed frames, so that the finished work appears to be an organic hybrid of painting and photography. The metallic foundation layer amplifies the photographically captured light and its play of reflections in the sky and water, significantly intensifying the radiance of the colors. This element of depth and vitality inherent in the picture is heightened by the viewer’s own movement in front of the work, as both light and colors seem to change with a shifting perspective. The result is a perfect congruity of the portrayal and the portrayed.

The landscapes of Elger Esser emanate an overwhelming presence, yet the images are most often of inconspicuous places. He is intent on  distilling a landscape down to its essence. A recurring theme in the artist’s work is the interconnection of nature with testaments of building culture, but in such a way that the motifs exist in a realm devoid of chronological or spatial markers, giving rise to something universal and timeless. It is from this vantage point that Esser views the stupendous silhouette of Mont-Saint-Michel, which has rested for a millennium in the breathtakingly beautiful tidal seascape, as a symbol of the experience of the immanence of things. 

Why does watching the setting and rising of the sun hold human beings the world over in its thrall? Perhaps because we find in this natural phenomenon a clearly visible manifestation of beauty, an otherwise so abstract and often controversial concept, perhaps also because it gives the individual a feeling of belonging to the world, to a great, incomprehensible whole. To view the beauty of the landscape in the wonder of the light is to take pause and marvel, to be still and to feel and hear one’s own inner self in the stillness of being. It is to access a profound level, a space in which the enigmas of existence lie hidden, far from the loud and hectic constraints of daily life.

Elger Esser was born in 1967 in Stuttgart and grew up in Rome. From 1991 to 1997 he studied with Bernd Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Esser’s work is represented in the following museum collections, among others: Guggenheim Museum New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Kunsthaus Zürich, Centre Pompidou Paris, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus Munich, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

A Group Show

TRANSFORMATION: MATERIAL & DISSOLUTION

Wolfgang Flad, Fernando de Brito, Joseph Beuys, Rikako Kawauchi, Rebecca Stevenson, Lorenzo Pompa, Elger Esser, Robert Currie

June 17, 2023

 — 

August 5, 2023

As the title of the show suggests, the focus here is on the alchemical aspect of art. This could perhaps be described as a recharging action, by which lifeless, inconspicuous material is reborn as something precious, fascinating, powerful and unique, and this element then remains purposely perceptible in the work. Perhaps to provoke wonder, a moment to stop and take up the scent that brings the viewer into active dialogue with the work and its aura.

The exhibition ‘TRANSFORMATIONS: MATERIAL AND DISSOLUTION’ brings together works of 11 international artists in which the transformation of materials plays a role, often a fundamental one. Here we encounter matter in the form of: dust, wax, paper, nylon, epoxy, glass, mirrored glass, silver, ink, graphite and plaster.

Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) a major protagonist of the post-war avant-garde, Beuys is undisputedly among the most influential artists, whose understanding of material (also in the alchemical sense) went as far as the use of his own body. Here we present 6 very quiet, gentle frottage drawings that were made in the 50s in connection with his zinc relief „Vor der Geburt“ (Before the Birth).

The three-dimensional works of Japanese painter Rikako Kawauchi (*1990, lives in Tokyo) are made of flesh-colored serpentine structures cast in resin. They evoke organic entities that despite their utter abstraction exude an extreme realism.

Artist Wolfgang Flad (*1974, lives in Berlin) is represented with pieces from various work groups: abstract aluminum reliefs with a stark interplay between the shiny polished surface and the rough, pockmarked texture of the craters that blemish it to various degrees; colorful, reflective wall pieces from his ‘Dark Side of the Moon‘ cycle; and the latest works, large-format abstract tableaus with an uneven, sandy surface made of dust and sawdust collected from the floor of the artist’s studio, color-enhanced and transformed.

From a photographic template transferred in painting onto a collection of numerous thin, taught nylon threads, densely spaced yet offsetting each other, artist Robert Currie (*1976, lives in London) creates three-dimensional wall pieces that are visually extremely suggestive while appearing almost immaterial at the same time. His abstract works, on the other hand, evoke shadowy black mirrors.

Elger Esser (*1967, lives in Düsseldorf) here shows two small-format nightscapes, in which the black silhouettes of treetops are seen in the moonlight, outlined against the night sky. The special technique of direct pigment printing on silver-plated copper plates palpably communicates the magical atmosphere, as the eye roams the scene of darkest night, seeking orientation and a sense of space in the few light sources to be found.

The black and white photographs of Pierre Faure (*1965, lives in Paris) have a surprising extreme-yet- subtle alienation effect: with a flipped perspective, a skillfully chosen image edit and reduction of visual information down to purely geometric structures the perception of scaffolding is completely redefined.

Using more or less sharp objects, Fernando de Brito (*1956, lives in Hamburg), carves through the layers of oil and tempera built up on the MDF “canvas” to create paintings that are a mesh of lines. The principal of oscillation between clearly spaced straight vertical lines and freehand, dynamic horizontal lines seems to make each composition pulsate and allows it to breath.

Dutch artist Bas de Wit (*1977, lives in Maastricht) transforms casts of old art-historical sculptures, out of which he makes new, more rough-hewn castings, which he in turn then casts with colored layers of resin. This process leaves much room for deformation, by accident or design, resulting in newly created sculptures that are but a vague reminiscence of the original historical model, from which they have liberated themselves in stages, to assert their own existence in the end.

Wax, a flexible, user-friendly material, has been deployed widely throughout art history in the area of applied arts and for maquettes of planned sculptures. Rebecca Stevenson (*1971, lives in London), in contrast to the hyperrealism of the 60s or 90s, uses wax to sculpturally paraphrase the depiction of reality found in her poetic-macabre allegories.

The always intensely colorful figurative scenarios in the paintings of Lorenzo Pompa (*1962, lives in Düsseldorf) are joined at regular intervals, as if in an ongoing dialogue, by black-silver abstract works in which the oil paint is constrained in minimalistic gesture that depending on the size can become an almost unlimited textural field. This show presents the latest of these paintings.

Michael Wittassek (*1958, lives near Cologne), for his part, works mainly in the form of installation with sculptures of folded, crumpled sheets of exposed photographic paper. Here, however, we are showing mid-sized black, mirrored objects with a reflective convex surface that seems to suck in the surrounding space and even the viewers themselves.

We would like to thank the participating artists for their generous constructive input.

A Group Show

TRANSFORMATION: MATERIAL & DISSOLUTION

Wolfgang Flad, Fernando de Brito, Joseph Beuys, Rikako Kawauchi, Rebecca Stevenson, Lorenzo Pompa, Elger Esser, Robert Currie

June 17, 2023

 — 

August 5, 2023

As the title of the show suggests, the focus here is on the alchemical aspect of art. This could perhaps be described as a recharging action, by which lifeless, inconspicuous material is reborn as something precious, fascinating, powerful and unique, and this element then remains purposely perceptible in the work. Perhaps to provoke wonder, a moment to stop and take up the scent that brings the viewer into active dialogue with the work and its aura.

The exhibition ‘TRANSFORMATIONS: MATERIAL AND DISSOLUTION’ brings together works of 11 international artists in which the transformation of materials plays a role, often a fundamental one. Here we encounter matter in the form of: dust, wax, paper, nylon, epoxy, glass, mirrored glass, silver, ink, graphite and plaster.

Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) a major protagonist of the post-war avant-garde, Beuys is undisputedly among the most influential artists, whose understanding of material (also in the alchemical sense) went as far as the use of his own body. Here we present 6 very quiet, gentle frottage drawings that were made in the 50s in connection with his zinc relief „Vor der Geburt“ (Before the Birth).

The three-dimensional works of Japanese painter Rikako Kawauchi (*1990, lives in Tokyo) are made of flesh-colored serpentine structures cast in resin. They evoke organic entities that despite their utter abstraction exude an extreme realism.

Artist Wolfgang Flad (*1974, lives in Berlin) is represented with pieces from various work groups: abstract aluminum reliefs with a stark interplay between the shiny polished surface and the rough, pockmarked texture of the craters that blemish it to various degrees; colorful, reflective wall pieces from his ‘Dark Side of the Moon‘ cycle; and the latest works, large-format abstract tableaus with an uneven, sandy surface made of dust and sawdust collected from the floor of the artist’s studio, color-enhanced and transformed.

From a photographic template transferred in painting onto a collection of numerous thin, taught nylon threads, densely spaced yet offsetting each other, artist Robert Currie (*1976, lives in London) creates three-dimensional wall pieces that are visually extremely suggestive while appearing almost immaterial at the same time. His abstract works, on the other hand, evoke shadowy black mirrors.

Elger Esser (*1967, lives in Düsseldorf) here shows two small-format nightscapes, in which the black silhouettes of treetops are seen in the moonlight, outlined against the night sky. The special technique of direct pigment printing on silver-plated copper plates palpably communicates the magical atmosphere, as the eye roams the scene of darkest night, seeking orientation and a sense of space in the few light sources to be found.

The black and white photographs of Pierre Faure (*1965, lives in Paris) have a surprising extreme-yet- subtle alienation effect: with a flipped perspective, a skillfully chosen image edit and reduction of visual information down to purely geometric structures the perception of scaffolding is completely redefined.

Using more or less sharp objects, Fernando de Brito (*1956, lives in Hamburg), carves through the layers of oil and tempera built up on the MDF “canvas” to create paintings that are a mesh of lines. The principal of oscillation between clearly spaced straight vertical lines and freehand, dynamic horizontal lines seems to make each composition pulsate and allows it to breath.

Dutch artist Bas de Wit (*1977, lives in Maastricht) transforms casts of old art-historical sculptures, out of which he makes new, more rough-hewn castings, which he in turn then casts with colored layers of resin. This process leaves much room for deformation, by accident or design, resulting in newly created sculptures that are but a vague reminiscence of the original historical model, from which they have liberated themselves in stages, to assert their own existence in the end.

Wax, a flexible, user-friendly material, has been deployed widely throughout art history in the area of applied arts and for maquettes of planned sculptures. Rebecca Stevenson (*1971, lives in London), in contrast to the hyperrealism of the 60s or 90s, uses wax to sculpturally paraphrase the depiction of reality found in her poetic-macabre allegories.

The always intensely colorful figurative scenarios in the paintings of Lorenzo Pompa (*1962, lives in Düsseldorf) are joined at regular intervals, as if in an ongoing dialogue, by black-silver abstract works in which the oil paint is constrained in minimalistic gesture that depending on the size can become an almost unlimited textural field. This show presents the latest of these paintings.

Michael Wittassek (*1958, lives near Cologne), for his part, works mainly in the form of installation with sculptures of folded, crumpled sheets of exposed photographic paper. Here, however, we are showing mid-sized black, mirrored objects with a reflective convex surface that seems to suck in the surrounding space and even the viewers themselves.

We would like to thank the participating artists for their generous constructive input.

Elger Esser

Grey Le Gray

October 30, 2020

 — 

January 16, 2021

The title of the show is a play on words that hints at the content: for Grey Le Gray Elger Esser for the first time and in his own subtle way, explores the work of Gustave Le Gray, the preeminent landscape photographer of the mid-19th century. The technological limitations of the day – including the inability to reproduce genuine color and the long exposure times necessitated by the quality of the emulsions – prompted Le Gray (1820–1884) to draw on his own resourcefulness and ingenuity as he experimented with innovative techniques and processes to advance the state-of-the-art. But the uniqueness of his work stems mainly from the fact Le Gray, an academically trained painter, always maintained his identity as an artist, although in that period photography was not deemed a fully-fledged art form equal to painting. Le Gray’s artistic sense of composition is most clearly displayed in his work series ‘Marines’ (seascapes). With the carefully considered combination of two different negatives, each from a separate exposure – one of the sky, one of the sea – he created stunning visual compositions of lines, light and contrasts, of calm and of dynamic spaces. Le Gray was not pursuing a realistic depiction of the world in the photographic medium; he was interested in conveying a sensation of being in this world.

In the new Elger Esser exhibition Van der Grinten Galerie is pleased to present the artist’s most recent works, born of the impulse he received from immersing himself in the work of Le Gray. These new seascapes, with their extremely reduced color spectrum and subtle tonal values, dry ink printed on silver coated copper plates, do not depict any specific landscapes. Rather, the images reflect Esser’s ongoing artistic exploration of the possibilities of portraying the idea of a landscape, a consistent pursuit of the artist since the mid-90s. Along the way he has continued to delve into the history of European visual art – both photography and painting – and 19th century literature, in other words, with the real beginning of modernism: Proust, Flaubert, Huysmans, Maupassant, Corot, die Barbizon School, Monet, Le Gray.

In a sort of reversal of the Le Gray biography, Elger Esser is a photographer who has virtually become a painter. In his pictures he transfers what he sees into an imaginarydimension that is temporal, yet purposely also removed from the present. It is an exalted dimension that connects us with the time before and after our time, and, like an echo, resonates with something deep within.

Elger Esser

Grey Le Gray

October 30, 2020

 — 

January 16, 2021

The title of the show is a play on words that hints at the content: for Grey Le Gray Elger Esser for the first time and in his own subtle way, explores the work of Gustave Le Gray, the preeminent landscape photographer of the mid-19th century. The technological limitations of the day – including the inability to reproduce genuine color and the long exposure times necessitated by the quality of the emulsions – prompted Le Gray (1820–1884) to draw on his own resourcefulness and ingenuity as he experimented with innovative techniques and processes to advance the state-of-the-art. But the uniqueness of his work stems mainly from the fact Le Gray, an academically trained painter, always maintained his identity as an artist, although in that period photography was not deemed a fully-fledged art form equal to painting. Le Gray’s artistic sense of composition is most clearly displayed in his work series ‘Marines’ (seascapes). With the carefully considered combination of two different negatives, each from a separate exposure – one of the sky, one of the sea – he created stunning visual compositions of lines, light and contrasts, of calm and of dynamic spaces. Le Gray was not pursuing a realistic depiction of the world in the photographic medium; he was interested in conveying a sensation of being in this world.

In the new Elger Esser exhibition Van der Grinten Galerie is pleased to present the artist’s most recent works, born of the impulse he received from immersing himself in the work of Le Gray. These new seascapes, with their extremely reduced color spectrum and subtle tonal values, dry ink printed on silver coated copper plates, do not depict any specific landscapes. Rather, the images reflect Esser’s ongoing artistic exploration of the possibilities of portraying the idea of a landscape, a consistent pursuit of the artist since the mid-90s. Along the way he has continued to delve into the history of European visual art – both photography and painting – and 19th century literature, in other words, with the real beginning of modernism: Proust, Flaubert, Huysmans, Maupassant, Corot, die Barbizon School, Monet, Le Gray.

In a sort of reversal of the Le Gray biography, Elger Esser is a photographer who has virtually become a painter. In his pictures he transfers what he sees into an imaginarydimension that is temporal, yet purposely also removed from the present. It is an exalted dimension that connects us with the time before and after our time, and, like an echo, resonates with something deep within.

Elger Esser

Paysages intimes

April 14, 2018

 — 

June 2, 2018

We are pleased to present the latest work of Elger Esser in his first solo exhibition at the Van der Grinten Galerie. To assert that Elger Esser is representative of the Düsseldorf School of Photography, the purposeful, conceptual approach of his teachers Bernd and Hilla Becher, may seem surprising given the aching beauty and emotional impact of his images.  Though Elger’s expression is entirely his own, the influence is apparent in a shared focus: a consistent, committed exploration of the possibilities of the photographic image in a fine arts context. In other words: on a plane that transcends the inconsequential and superficial, with the ambivalent nature of photography as the acknowledged subject and point of departure.

Esser repeatedly turns his artistic and intellectual attention to landscapes (generally featuring bodies of water), locations where the eye cannot cling to borders, making objects and events seem infinite. Viewers are left to draw their own conclusions, which elicits the same subjective response as objective “reality”. Although these sites, the places that Esser discovers and explores on his many travels, are contemporary locations his work coaxes the timelessness out of them, especially by means of sensitive, subdued coloration and the use of elaborate printing techniques, including some very hands-on historical ones. The Proustian search for time lost is extended to include lost places, a trigger of subconscious remembrance.

In his most recent work, images gathered in Northern France, Elger Esser has printed the photographs on silver-coated copper plates, once a material-of-choice for Baroque painter Adam Elsheimer as it allows for exceedingly thin paint application, letting the luminous ground shimmer through to enrich the effect of the oil paint. Compared to Esser’s earlier work the luminosity of the colors here is extreme, and exposed to various lighting scenarios the photographs have a spatial quality and a depth that seems endless.

Esser subverts a fundamental feature of photography: the notion of the precise preservation of a moment in time. His photographs evoke a world where time and place, coordinates of exact documentation, are relative.

Elger Esser was born in 1967 in Stuttgart and grew up in Rome. He studied with Bernd Becher from 1991 to 1997 at the Academy of Fine Arts Düsseldorf.

Works by Elger Esser are represented in the following museum collections, among others: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Kunsthaus Zürich, Centre Pompidou Paris, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus München, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, DZ Bank Kunstsammlung Frankfurt am Main.

Elger Esser

Paysages intimes

April 14, 2018

 — 

June 2, 2018

We are pleased to present the latest work of Elger Esser in his first solo exhibition at the Van der Grinten Galerie. To assert that Elger Esser is representative of the Düsseldorf School of Photography, the purposeful, conceptual approach of his teachers Bernd and Hilla Becher, may seem surprising given the aching beauty and emotional impact of his images.  Though Elger’s expression is entirely his own, the influence is apparent in a shared focus: a consistent, committed exploration of the possibilities of the photographic image in a fine arts context. In other words: on a plane that transcends the inconsequential and superficial, with the ambivalent nature of photography as the acknowledged subject and point of departure.

Esser repeatedly turns his artistic and intellectual attention to landscapes (generally featuring bodies of water), locations where the eye cannot cling to borders, making objects and events seem infinite. Viewers are left to draw their own conclusions, which elicits the same subjective response as objective “reality”. Although these sites, the places that Esser discovers and explores on his many travels, are contemporary locations his work coaxes the timelessness out of them, especially by means of sensitive, subdued coloration and the use of elaborate printing techniques, including some very hands-on historical ones. The Proustian search for time lost is extended to include lost places, a trigger of subconscious remembrance.

In his most recent work, images gathered in Northern France, Elger Esser has printed the photographs on silver-coated copper plates, once a material-of-choice for Baroque painter Adam Elsheimer as it allows for exceedingly thin paint application, letting the luminous ground shimmer through to enrich the effect of the oil paint. Compared to Esser’s earlier work the luminosity of the colors here is extreme, and exposed to various lighting scenarios the photographs have a spatial quality and a depth that seems endless.

Esser subverts a fundamental feature of photography: the notion of the precise preservation of a moment in time. His photographs evoke a world where time and place, coordinates of exact documentation, are relative.

Elger Esser was born in 1967 in Stuttgart and grew up in Rome. He studied with Bernd Becher from 1991 to 1997 at the Academy of Fine Arts Düsseldorf.

Works by Elger Esser are represented in the following museum collections, among others: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Kunsthaus Zürich, Centre Pompidou Paris, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus München, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, DZ Bank Kunstsammlung Frankfurt am Main.

Elger Esser on “140, Saint Malo”

5'08 (English)

Elger Esser, DE SUBLIME

Stelline Foundation, Milano, 2017 (English/Italian), 5'48

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Elger Esser and the heliogravure

Madrid 2015 (English/Spanish), 1'51

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York / USA
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / USA
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo / USA
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam / NL
Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf / DE
Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich / CH
Fonds national d’art contemporain, Paris / FR
Centre Pompidou, Paris / FR
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich / DE
Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Stuttgart / DE
Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Salzburg / AU
Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna / AU
DZ Bank Kunstsammlung, Frankfurt / DE
SMS Contemporanea, ex Palazzo Delle Papesse, Siena / IT
Fundació Foto Colectania, Barcelona / ES
LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn / DE
Huis Marseille, Amsterdam / NL
Tang Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs / USA