Plan B – Side A Photographs by Oliver Godow
Pink all over 1
A small exhibition of photographs by the German artist Oliver Godow is currently on in the McBey Room at Aberdeen Art Gallery.
Godow’s painting-like photographs present us with combinations of angles and colours which I would love to show examples of but unfortunately the Gallery has a policy of zero tolerance of photographing its stuff – unlike Manchester Gallery, Tate Modern, Guggenheim Bilbao – you get the picture.
The two-dimensional angular forms on the left of the door are reminiscent of early 20thC abstract paintings. Perhaps that was just me. I always relate one art form to another when it’s likely the artist wasn’t thinking of anything of the kind. Doesn’t mean to say it isn’t there of course.
Regular readers will know I like to illustrate my blogs so in lieu of images from Plan B I am including some colourful angles from the delightful Union Terrace Gardens which lie close to the Art Gallery.
Godow was born in Lübeck but has lived and studied in Scotland.
These photographs were shot in Augsburg in Bavaria. Godow’s Plan B that is not Union Terrace Gardens ones. Just thought I’d make that clear.
Godow’s works encompass a very wide subject area: documentary, urban spaces, objects or as he has here geometric shapes, texture and colour. He captures detail of all kinds of objects with his camera lens so that colour, as in his Pink all over 1 above, saturates the eye to the extent you can almost taste its sugary pink pig quality.
In this exhibition it is colour which is one of the most striking aspects of his work. That said his umbrella image is not one of these with its subtle soft fringe of umbrella silk cutting through the 2-dimensional surface as it carries the eye down and across the composition.
Apart from the Pink my favourite is his Green on Green or a title fairly close to that.
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