Julian N. Ronnefeldt - Artist's statement

I started my photographic work in Germany in the nineties, experimenting with B/W photography, being strongly influenced by the likes of Bresson, Capa, Lee Miller, Man Ray and others from the 1920's photography/art circles surrounding the Dada and Surrealist movements. Parallel to this development I worked for advertising and people photographers in Duesseldorf and Essen. Through this I learned to work in the studio environment, which strongly influenced my photographic expression. With technics such as multi/long time exposures, photogramm and exploring different surfaces with photographic emulsion I explored the boundaries of traditional B/W photography with concentration of the human being in its environments as well as taking the human out of its normal habitat and reduce it to its purest physical form.

"psychiatric sentence" video installation collaboration with Gillian McIver 2002.

My main focus point in this was to express the human emotions through mask, body paint and acting leaving no connection to the surrounding but to the pure expression of the individual, while at the same time distorting it. Working closely with musicians I went into providing my artwork to live music acts involving and experimenting with new media like 8mm 16mm film and video. Also using photography to create short sequences according to the music and its content, projecting my photographs/films onto stages and different surfaces and backgrounds.

Taking the subject a step further, from the total reduction of space on the actual photo, to project it into new space, already existing supplying me with different surfaces and thus changing the concept of the space the image is projected in, as well as the context of the photo in its relation to the new space. Through this I seek to emphasise the constant transitory state of existing space in a flux of time, which human tries to break by erecting monuments build to withstand this flux. In my eyes a desparate attempt to cheat the fact that all human existence is a blink in time as a whole and this standing as a greater example for the individual leading to confusion, fear and despair in society and in the individual unit.

Connecting my Video clips and photos to live music acts represents the momentary existence of the act as a representation of existence as a whole. Digital images are projected, virtual worlds superimposed into the physical world creating a transition between the two or making them clash. Through working in different venues all over London the challenge of working with existing space and using its shape and character and history as an element in my presentations, site specific work became a focus point of my work, using different kind of derelict and intact sites for the photo/video shoots and later for their presentation. Rather than using a space for its destined purpose, "misusing" a space, which had a total different purpose.

As well as breathing new life into space that has died, temporally expropriating the spaces meaning to take it out of its context in order to highlight its physical existence and at the same time its non existence in a fixed meaning. Working in site specific appeals to me because it is a practise that combines two essential elements: the concept and the element of chance. the preplanning and the spontaneous act of creation, according to what the site has on offer - which helps me to discover new aspects of my original idea and which I believe feeds back to the visitor being involved in something that is still evolving.