Happy Okto­ber­fest!

Five of the Gal­lery for Con­tem­porary Photography’s artists address the event known as “Okto­ber­fest” and pre­sent their very own per­spec­tives on the world’s lar­gest folk fes­ti­val. The exhi­bi­tion title “Happy Okto­ber­fest!” was deli­be­ra­tely cho­sen to be one-dimensional and invi­tes the viewer to explore the artists’ indi­vi­dual posi­ti­ons in the exhi­bi­ted works. These per­spec­tives include ambi­guous decla­ra­tion, indi­vi­dual appro­pria­tion, as well as cri­ti­cal ana­ly­sis.
Munich pho­to­gra­pher Sonja Her­pich is rep­re­sen­ted by her famous series, “half kit­chen,” in which she has pho­to­gra­phed her­self before and after her shifts as an Okto­ber­fest wai­t­ress over a 16-day period in a quasi-photographic time lapse. In an impres­sive man­ner, the noi­si­ness and phy­si­cal exer­tion of her expe­ri­ence have car­ved them­sel­ves into the artist’s facial fea­tures, con­vey­ing the strain of the demand that staff main­tain a beau­ti­ful appearance. On the other hand, Käthe deKoes’ images set up a con­trast by making a state­ment about the hec­tic bustle of the rides and the cool aes­the­tic of machi­nes alongs­ide the visua­liza­tion of speed and light. Julia Thalhofer’s Pola­roid prints take a dif­fe­rent approach. Through a vin­tage color palette pai­red with slightly milky blurs, her pho­tos cele­brate the aes­the­tic excess of a fes­ti­val by pre­sen­ting it as a para­di­siac place of lon­ging that exists far from reality—consciously app­ly­ing “too much” as a cri­ti­cal alter­na­tive. From Alois Späth comes the sound instal­la­tion “Kling­ada …!” com­pri­sed of two beer mugs, trans­du­cers and audio elec­tro­nics that will play a tonal atmo­s­phere from Okto­ber­fest through a spe­cial vibra­tion speaker, using two beer mugs. Sounds, voices, snip­pets of music and all sorts of noi­ses are fil­te­red and trans­pa­r­ently high­ligh­ted by the mate­rial of the beer mug, a sound– and beer-induced bliss, a blissful hea­ven of sound and beer… Finally, Alexa Meade trans­for­med two beer steins into flat, two-dimensional rep­re­sen­ta­ti­ons of them­sel­ves through which she lea­ves a pain­terly inter­pre­ta­tion of the objects directly on their sur­faces, per­so­na­li­zing them by the app­li­ca­tion of her signa­ture style.