fiction ‒ Berit Schneidereit
-The landscapes are uninhabited, but the architecture and pathways in some of the images testify to the culturaltransformation of the landscape and are vestiges of a human presence.It is rarely possible to pinpoint the exact location of the photographs — their visual information is generally too vague — but the abundance ofimages together forms something of an imaginary photographic location. Imaginary in the sense of an imago, a place of images whose narrativeis generated and guided by Berit Schneidereit’s portfolio of images.This means that fiction is a programmatic title that emphasizes the narrative nature of any image-generating practice, but at the same time alsofiction in the sense of invention, which takes into consideration the autonomous artistic presence in the image.In fiction, Berit Schneidereit's pictures are staged image spaces that interlace the topographical motif with the photographic construction intheir artistic autonomy.Her large, two-part works have a time-related aspect, working by slightly shifting the viewpoint, almost like cinematic sequences. From a distancethe representative, documentary nature of the photos becomes evident, the landscape and the plants have razor-sharp outlines and are atmo-spherically dense. This impression dissolves as one takes a closer look, the image is evenly covered by a grid, outlines blur, previously lifelikeparts of plants seem as if they have been cut out with a scalpel. It is astonishing to see the representative function of the picture merge into acompletely autonomous pictorial arrangement, comparable to an impressionist painting. The uniform grid that overlays all the images in theexhibition as a photogram, atomizes the motif, creating an almost abstract arrangement. Should, for example in the case of the small-formatphotographs, a romantic proximity to postcard photography still exist, it gives way to the artist's own creative drive.With ‘fiction’, Berit Schneidereit shows the full potential of advanced photography by trusting the representative function of photography withall its content-related implications, while at the same time giving the medium its own suggestively abstract position.Berit Schneidereit was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1988 and studied at theKunstakademie Düsseldorf under Hubert Kiecol and Andreas Gursky, where shegraduated as a master student in 2017. She has received the dhCS-Studio Grantfrom the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, as well asthe van-Rinsum grant from the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.Alongside fiction, Berit Schneidereit is showing works as part of the exhibitionNext Generations. Aktuelle Fotografie made im Rheinland (Next Generations.Current photography made in the Rhineland) at the Morsbroich Museum as wellas in The Gulf Between at the Cultural Center de Warande in Turnhout, Belgium.