Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
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His works focus on the medium of photography and its relation to reality. Both analogue and digital photographic techniques are used to explore the purity and aesthetics of the medium.
"99 mirrors, 2021" 90cm x 90cm, C-Print
This series of works shows 99 seemingly abstract light sculptures, which are created and reproduced with photographic means. In the process, phenomena that are invisible to the human eye, such as the spectrum of light, the heat and the interpretation by technical devices, are visualized.
The basis are mirror surfaces, which are thermally deformed and then digitized in a scanning process. The colored surfaces and distortions only arise in the interplay between the light emitted by the scanner, the three-dimensional mirror objects and the interpretation by the software. The titles of the individual series of works refer to the type of thermal sources used for the deformation or to geometric figures that are burned onto the mirrors. The mirrors then show a trace, an index, of the heat, which is invisible to the human eye. In addition, the color spectrum of the light source is broken down into individual parts and interpreted.
"Glass Compositions, 2021" 100cm x 80cm, C-Print
The compositions show single parts of former church windows arranged in a symmetric way as a pile. While referencing the color field paintings of Mark Rothko and others, the single parts show details off the glass and the handcrafted character of it. Therefore they give a clear hint to their photographic background and to the history of the glasses. Light as the material of photography is the main ingredient here. The glass was backlit and the colors reversed to capture these images as it would be in case of a photographic negative.
The former use of the windows where these glasses came from was to transform the light in order to create a specific atmosphere inside the holy buildings. While these compositions lost their religious meaning they still try to achieve an atmosphere of contemplation.
"Baltic Amber, 2019" 125cm x 100cm, analogue C-Print
Baltic amber was projected onto light-sensitive photographic paper using the analogical foto lab and it’s physico-chemical process. The inversion of the colours, which normally turns the negative into a positive, turns the natural object into an abstracted image. Baltic Amber consists of orange coloured and hardened resin, often containing insects and plant remains from a long time ago. While the ability to store information in a translucent medium is reminiscent of the photographic negative, this work draws a connection from a natural phenomenon to a human made process, which normally is intended to capture a moment of time, creating images which show reality. The outcome in this case is an abstracted and artificial version of it.
Artist Biography
Alexander Kadow was born 1985 in Germany.
He has been working as photographer and artist since 2011 and currently lives and works in Berlin.
His works focus on the medium of photography and its relation to reality. Both analogue and digital photographic techniques are used to explore the purity and aesthetics of the medium.
Education
2019-2021 Master of Fine Arts, HfbK (university of fine arts) Hamburg (Broomberg & Chanarin)
2017-2019 Meisterklasse, Ostkreuzschule for photography
2015-2019 Bachelor of Fine Arts, HfbK (university of fine arts) Hamburg (Broomberg & Chanarin)
2007-2010 Lette Verein, photography, Berlin.
