ARTISSIMA
Gundula Schulze Eldowy
01.–03.11.2024
Via Giacomo Mattè Trucco, 70, 10126 Torino, Italy
Article in Wallpaper
EBENSPERGER is pleased show a solo presentation by the GDR-born photographer Gundula Schulze Eldowy at ARTISSIMA, providing an insight into the artist's more than 40-year career.
Her works from the 1980s are among the most important visual testimonies to everyday life in East Germany. Many of her photographs capture the private lives of those living on the margins of society with a direct and unsparing gaze. By documenting the counterculture as well as elderly and disabled members of society, she drew attention to those who were ignored by the official media, which mostly painted an idealized picture of the socialist society.
With her famous series of nude portraits („Akte 1983-1987“) Schulze Eldowy immediately became an underground shooting star of the East German photography scene. Alongside the best known photographers of her time such as Sibylle Bergemann, Roger Melis, Helga Paris and Arno Fischer she was introduced to Robert Frank who visited east Berlin in 1985. Frank and Schulze Eldowy instantly discovered the artistic affinity they shared: their eye for misfits and outcasts, their coupling of social documentary photography and poetry and their absolute independence.
Out of the blue Frank offered Schulze Eldowy a solo exhibition in New York and invited her to come („Don’t worry, we are all good capitalists here“). This encounter marked the beginning of a livelong friendship and an extensive correspondence that – due to the surveillance of the east german secret service – had to be smuggled through West Berlin.
Between 1983 and 1990, she produced her best-known series "Workers", "Berlin on a Dog's Night", "Nudes" and "Tamerlan", all shot in black and white.
After the fall of the iron curtain Schulze Eldowy moved to New York where she lived from 1990 to 1993. In the capital of the capitalist world, she photographed almost exclusively in color. She also began experimenting with multiple exposures and mirroreffects. Inspired by her collaboration with Robert Frank, she acquired Polaroid and video cameras, which temporarily became part of her equipment.
Gundula Schulze Eldowy was quickly recognized in the USA. In 1992, she was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art ("New Photography 8“), which acquired some of her works for its permanent exhibition. In the same year, she also exhibited at the PACE MacGill Gallery and Laurence Miller Gallery, while on the other side of the Atlantic Klaus Biesenbach exhibited her together with Nan Goldin in the newly opened KW Institute for Contemporary Art ("Getrennte Welten“, 1992).
Like no other artist of her time, Gundula Schulze Eldowy visually explored two politically and ideologically opposing systems from the inside out and created a portrait of our time with her sensitive, poetic and yet always rebellious gaze.
Unlike no other female artists Gundula Schulze Eldowy was able to gain a foothold in the New York art scene and yet she has somehow disappeared from art history’s memory and art market’s visibility.
For ARTISSIMA, EBENSPERGER focuses on the artist's work from the years 1980 to 1993, which is marked by the collapse of socialism and the resulting radical change in her visual language.
With a selection of original vintage print photographs - from the early portraits of people on the margins of society under socialism, to her encounters with the avant-garde in New York - the exceptional quality of Schulze Eldowy's work is on display. The selected photographs combine some of her best known with very rarely shown photographs and vary in color, size and content.
By focusing on the artist's work of the 1980s and 1990s, the rupture in her artistic expression becomes apparent thus can be visually traced. By including her more abstract, large-scale multi-exposure photographs, even photography-specialist will be able to discover an almost unknown body of work that has been shown very rarely outside of the USA and Germany and is of extraordinary precision and quality.
After the late institutional recognition, EBENSPERGER is happy to show an outstanding female artist with a rebellious, unsparing gaze - an absolutely autonomous position and as such a solitaire among the photographers of her time.
Photos: © Gundula Schulze Eldowy
