Klaus Mettig – DON‘T BE LEFT BEHIND

The NGBK’s RealismusStudio presents an insight into the work of artist Klaus Mettig, showing at two exhibition locations in Berlin. The exhibition at NGBK concentrates on a wide-ranging presentation of his last two series of works, large-format photographic works produced in New York and Asia between 2004 and 2007. The Haus am Kleistpark is showing the simultaneous projections he developed during the 1970s and 1980s. They are far-reaching complex images of China (1978), Berlin in the times of the Wall (1981-83) and Moscow (1985).

For 35 years Klaus Mettig has been concerned with portraits of society, with the politics of urban economics in major metropolitan cities. In his photo series he condenses the calamity produced by the collision between political systems and declared to be a life-world, and develops comparisons. In the age of globalization these confrontations are becoming ever more absurd.
The photographs have the appearance of unmodified documents of the everyday. But one soon comes to realize how precisely each individual motif, frame and final format has been chosen and how the individual images, each complex enough in itself, have been assembled to form a multipart composition. Particularly impressive is the meticulousness with which the photographic surface has been worked, honed to a point where the grain becomes roughened, allowing the completely artificial way of dealing with the photographic medium and with methods for recording reality to be clearly appreciated.

The joint exhibition is to be accompanied by a publication containing selected work series and documentary material, which will appear to coincide with the opening at museum kunst palast.

Klaus Mettig’s „Don’t be Left Behind“ is to be published by Steidl in July 2008, ISBN 978-3-86521-595-6