Wolfgang Ganter: Lokalinfektion

In the organizer's words:

From April 18 to June 28, 2024, the Central Institute for Art History (ZI) is showing the exhibition "Local Infection" with new works by the artist Wolfgang Ganter. The exhibited WORKS IN PROGRESS are based on photographs of artworks that the artist took in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich and then infected with bacterial cultures. The bacteria feed on the photo emulsion, i.e. the gelatine layers of the photographic film, and "tease out" all the colors still hidden in it and rearrange them. Wolfgang Ganter tries to learn from every image he works on and to apply what he has learned later. In this respect, the result is not a pure product of chance, but rather a forced coincidence. The production process is controlled in such a way that the original motif is optimized aesthetically and in terms of content, i.e. it makes "progress". Usually, attempts are made to remove works of art from the cycle of life and matter by restoring them to their original state. According to Ganter, this causes them to lose some of their charm, their atmospheric effect and their authenticity. Wolfgang Ganter sees WORKS IN PROGRESS as his very personal processing of art history. The exhibition aims to bring you closer to this process of artistic exploration and appropriation by means of 13 selected works, which are being presented for the first time on the second floor of the northern atrium of the ZI. There is also an extension of the exhibition to the Museum for Casts of Classical Sculptures on the first floor. There, Wolfgang Ganter's Venus Pudica (Sandro Botticelli, Berlin Gemäldegalerie) will be juxtaposed with several sculptural contemporaries.

Wolfgang Ganter, born in Stuttgart in 1978, studied from 1999 to 2004 at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe under Andreas Slominski and Anselm Reyle and attended Andreas Slominski's master class. His work has been recognized worldwide through his participation in numerous solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums. He is represented internationally by galleries and his works can be found in public and private collections. Wolfgang Ganter has been working with bacterial cultures on photographic film since 2005 and has since produced several series of works. The artist lives and works in Berlin.