Biography

 

 
 
 
1958 Arrives in this world. Childhood and adolescence spread across Saarland, Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg
 
1978 Studies mathematics and begins work as an artist in Munich
 
Since 1979 friendship with the sculptor Paul Fuchs
 
1981 Exhibits for the first time. Works in New York City, meets Dan Graham, Leonard Bernstein, Arakawa among others
 
1982 Works in Tokyo, meets Emperor Hirohito, Kaii Higashiayma, Chionofuji among others
 
1984 – 1986 Lives in Paris, meets Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Leiris, Gisèle Freund, Jochen Gerz, Meret Oppenheim, Julien Green, among others. Realizes the first conceptual group of works: Portraits of Nuns and Monks in France
 
Since 1984 friendship with the conceptual artist Roman Opalka
 
1989 Solo exhibition of the Portraits of Nuns and Monks at Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
 
1989 – 1994 Residence and studio in Los Angeles. Realizes Los Angeles Portraits
 
Since 1996 Realizes the group of works Cathedrals
 
Since 1997 series, initially in China, continued worldwide (Collective Portraits, Façades)
 
2007 – 2014 Residence and studio in Beijing, Chinese Pool Portraits
 
2008 Wedding and birth of a son
 
2015 – 2016 Israeli Collective Portrait in Tel Aviv and production of the film “A Normal Day on Rothschild Boulevard”
 
Since 2004 Realizes work groups New Architectures and (since 2018) Transhistorical Places
 
 
Over time, two strands have emerged in my artistic practice: one related to portraits and another related to architecture. My interests, which take effect in the background of my artistic activities, as it were, are focused on psychological factors (and the associated question of identity) as well as sociological factors (and the attendant question of coexisting human beings and the structures arising from it in both the private and the public sphere). At the level of pictorially implementing the individual projects, my approach is a conceptual one. Hence, I do not employ the classical, or documentary style. Photography, which, after all, has only been deemed part of contemporary art for the past several decades, is, in my mind, a medium extraordinarily well-suited to reflect on the present in a visual manner precisely because of its pronounced hybridity – capable, as it is, of both indexical representation and pictorial self-sufficiency.

R.F.