Of flying pigs, zero gravity and up to 100m distance

12.10.2010

The artist Oliver Godow uses photography primarily as a documentary medium. Not in a traditional way but rather to transform interior and exterior spaces – void of people and objects found on the street – into timeless utopias which almost assume a sculptural dimension. Focusing on fragments and details of urban spaces, he reduces such elements to their surface and breaks them into individual fields of space. His conscious use of color is an important element of his work, as is his interest in structure, composition, and, not least, a humoristic twist in presentation. These symbolically charged arrangements are codes of urban daily life, which on the one hand seem abstract but on the other include hints and references to the depicted space. Godow thus invites the viewer to follow the traces in his photographs and search for the objects represented, whether this architecture or constellations of the everyday.

Oliver Godow (born 1970) was born in Germany but has been living and working in Edinburgh for many years. After studying photography at Bournemouth & Poole College of Art and at the Glasgow School, finishing with a MFA, he received several grants, including fellowships from the Ministry of Lower Saxony, the IFA Stuttgart and the Hope Scott Trust Edinburgh. Recently he was fellow at Durham University, UK. His works have been shown in different solo and group shows, most recently at the New York Photo Festival, in the exhibition “Desire Lines” at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh and “Do you see me” at Galerie m in Bochum as part of the “next level Symposium” organised by Folkwang Museum Essen. Following the Deutsche Börse Residency Program he has been guest at the School of Rome.