Jamie Zill Senior Portfolio 2010-11: Artist

http://www.joachimfroese.com/

interview

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2010/03/bsw_20100304_1026.mp3

gallery

Jan Manton Gallery

http://www.janmantonart.com

review of Rhopography

http://www.joachimfroese.com/uploads/File/Eyeline.pdf

biography

“German born artist Joachim Froese arrived in Australia in 1992 and since then has established himself as one of Australia’s leading emerging fine art photographers.

His latest series, begun in 2000, is titled "Rhopography"istorical and religious events. Yet good still life artists imbued these simple still life arrangements with meaning. They invited reflection. Some were religious meditations on daily provisions, or celebrations of the simple things we share as humans in our domestic environments. Life is made of simple things, but because they contribute to life, they become sacred or worthy of honour.

Joachim is interested in art history, and is inspired by the still life Spanish and Dutch artists of the Seventeenth Century. They painted meticulous and accurate pictures of food arrangements as meditations on life. Joachim chooses to use photography in a similarly disciplined way. His “still life” arrangements, often of food and insects, are carefully arranged “set pieces” or models, often very classical in appearance, but instead of them being glorious and lush tableaus of life, they are tinged with signs of decay. The fruit is beginning to rot, or the insect may be damaged. Joachim is using the “trivial” as meditations on the finite nature of life. The world and all that is in it is temporal, or transient. Life does not last. There is an existentialist theme in his work which is very European. What is the meaning or purpose of life? Or to quote the Hebrew poet from Ecclesiastes, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” His answer isn’t totally bleak however. Some pictures have a comical tone to them, the little insects almost becoming little actors in fantasy dramas. Even the more macabre images capture a beauty that is recognised in the composition.

Joachim is also interested in the very nature of photography. It is often claimed, “A photograph doesn’t lie.” Joachim’s photos show that photography does not always “show reality.” Every photo has an eye, and a mind, behind it and that influences everything about the final picture: why it was photographed, what the photographer’s purpose was, what the picture leaves out or edits by its frame. Froese’s photos are actually deliberate constructs. In that sense, they are not natural at all. He even uses photographic tricks in his works. Here he again is being a philosopher. What is the nature of vision, interpretation, and perception? How accurate are all our assumptions? How often are we deceived by what we see?

In our picture, Rhopography #33, an apple is shown in stages of decay. There is a lovely movement of mass in the picture as the apple seems to tilt and roll to one side, and the viewer’s gaze comes to rest on the very still, sharply focused leaf that has fallen from the stem. There is also a subtle visual trick played on us in the centre panel. The shadow caste from the apple in the first photo cannot be the same shadow in the second photo, for the very same apple appears in that photograph as well, except it is now on the opposite side of its shadow!

The photo conveys an apparent truth, but it is actually a carefully crafted illusion. Froese is toying with many ideas at once, yet manages to retain a beautifully structured and aesthetic image.

This artfulness and intelligence has projected Froese onto the international art scene in recent years. He completed a Masters of Visual Arts from the Queensland College of Arts in 2001. Since then, he has featured in showcase exhibitions of top Australian photographers (Photographica Australis) in Spain, Singapore, Thailand, The Netherlands, Taiwan, and Bangladesh (The prestigious 11th Asian Art Biennale, Dhaka).”

http://fittell.id.au/aac/artist-info/joachim_froese_bio.html

The pictures are bleak and grotesquely funny. They are also exceedingly odd…It is a world we only get to see because of photography.”

http://www.joachimfroese.com/uploads/File/Eyeline.pdf

The resulting work shows an eclectic cross section of literature. But more than that it has become a manifestation of the woman she was, a metaphor for life and a diary of the time I spent with her - a portrait of my mother.

“Portrait of my Mother” artist statement

“The objects depicted in this series have a physical or emotional relation to events in my recent - or more distant – past. Each object constitutes memory, each image tells a story linked to my mother’s recent death and/or my childhood.

To me, the images are explicit, they describe events in much the same way as a diary would. For the viewer, only the essence of my thoughts is accessible. It is on this level that they talk about more fundamental aspects of the human existence such as balance, loss, and memory per se.

In these works nothing is still, everything is moving, floating and filled with hidden meaning – as is life.”

“Written in the Past” artist statement

“In contemporary society the idea of the archive plays an important role in the construction of knowledge and history, both public and private. We collect things to preserve a past that no longer exists. The medium of photography directly relates to this concept: the photograph deals with “what was” and thus plays a significant part in our perception of the past. It is one of the essential foundations on which we build elaborate mental structures to reassure our view of the world. As soon as we file the past in our personal archive of memories we select and construct - without realising that many of the structures we are about to build are as unsound as the ones depicted in my work.”

“Archive” artist statement

I really enjoy Joachim Froese's use of objects of the past to define either another person or himself. He even goes into explanation of how these same objects, the books in specific, made him feel differently at different points of life in different locations. Yet they still spoke about his mother. I love his artist statement on "Written in the Past." It speaks a lot to what I am dealing with in my project. I love the movement contradicted with still images. They way he speaks of his work being a diary is how I hope my work comes across as well.