WERKSCHAU X — For the past ten years the FOTOGALERIE WIEN has held a series of annual exhibitions. This series of exhibitions presents select contemporary artists who have made a significant contribution to the art of photography in Austria. This year’s edition of WERKSCHAU is dedicated to exploring the 40 years of works by the artist Branko Lenart from Graz.–
Branko Lenart, born 1948 in Ptuj, Slovenia immigrated with his parents in 1954 to Austria. Today he lives and works in Graz. Branko has a critical spirit and a strong political engagement. As an artist as well as co-founder of the ARTIKEL VII KULTURVEREINS he actively fights for the political and cultural rights of the Slovenian minority in Styria.
Lenart’s works are characterized by continually shifting between reportage photography and conceptual photography. His reportage works are entrenched in the realm of subjective photography and subjective topography while focusing on social and political themes. Where the phenomenon of observation and expansion of perception accentuate his conceptual photography. The exhibition ranges from the early reportage photos of the 1970’s to the topographical and the social documentary works of the 1980’s (like the Millerton-Project – a sociological case study of 30 middle class American families) to works like the Kaddisch series from the 1990’s with strong political and historical references in which we are reminded of the numerous Grazer Jews killed in concentration camps, and then finally to the newest conceptual pieces, such as ManuScript, where Lenart takes up the unification of word and image in his photographs.
The exhibition contains a cross section of works comprising approximately 40 phases from the past 40 years. Shown will be representative works from the most important series/portfolios. The portfolios consist in each instance from 16 to 220 mainly black and white photographs.
PHOTO CONCEPT 1965 – 2005 is organized in 7 separate production groups:
„ON THE ROAD“ / „SELFPORTRAITS“ / „ÜBER.FORMAT“
„SUBJEKTIVE TOPOGRAPHIE“ / „RES PUBLICA“ / „DIPTYCHEN“
„HAND.WERK“
All works are authentic and are not altered/manipulated photographs. Branko Lenart