Ulrich Hensel: Sites

Ulrich Hensel finds photographic subjects at construction sites. What holds his attention is what happens accidentally on hoardings, concrete and steel: arrangements of building materials that can read as abstract painting, half-reliefs or sculpture. Born in 1946, Hensel has made this found material the ground of a sustained photographic project, and Sites gathers forty-five of its results.

The discipline of the work lies in the looking rather than the making. The images are not digitally retouched — and the coherence of the series comes from Hensel’s selection. Framing draws rebar, T-beams, wall markings, cladding and steel mesh into taut fields of colour and compact ciphers; the publisher likens the effect to Rothko, Judd and Twombly, providing artistic reference points for the found forms. A strip of ground runs along the bottom of every composition, a quiet optical cue that returns the abstraction to a place.

Hung at one-to-one scale on a wall, these photographs are described as windows to the world, and the phrase catches their double character: they hold as pictures, and they remain stubbornly, concretely of something. The expectation of seeing art changes how these construction materials can be read.

The book was published by Hatje Cantz in September 2014: 120 pages, 45 photographs, hardcover, 270 by 310 mm, in German and English, with texts by Raimund Stecker and Ralph Heusner. For a collector, its specific interest lies in the relationship between found construction materials and photographic selection. Hensel’s framing makes ordinary technical structures available to an artistic reading, while the strip of ground retains a connection with the place in which he found them. The publication gathers that approach into a defined body of images with accompanying writing.

Ulrich Hensel (b. 1946) finds the subjects for his unique photographic works on construction sites. There he discovers impressive and expressive abstract paintings, half-reliefs, and sculptures that arose by chance and whose appearance confounds the viewer. Reduced, always authentic, and never digitally retouched, the great coherence of the photographs lies in the artist's masterful selection: faithfully reproduced on the wall, Hensel's images are simultaneously windows to the world. The unsensual, technical world of concrete reinforcements, I-beams, insulation materials, wall markings, formwork, and steel mats condenses in his excerpts into exciting color fields, sculptures, and ciphers, somewhere between Mark Rothko, Donald Judd, and Cy Twombly. Consistently, all of Hensel's compositions conclude with a strip of floor at the bottom of the image – as a visual aid for the viewer: only those who expect to see art will find it.

Texts by: Raimund Stecker, Ralph Heusner
German, English
September 2014, 120 Pages , 45 Photos
hardcover
270mm x 310mm
ISBN:978-3-7757-3890-3

Publisher page editorial text:
| The construction site as a fascinating world of photographic readymades: a matter of perspective
Ulrich Hensel (* 1946) finds the motifs of his remark­able photographs at construction sites. These chance constellations—expressive and abstract paintings, semi-reliefs, and sculptures—are not always readily identifiable to the viewer. The pared-down language of the image is always based on an authentic photo­graph, which is never digitally altered; the great strin­gency of these works is indebted solely to the mas­terfully selective eye of the artist. Hung on the wall in one-to-one scale, Hensel’s photographs are windows to the world. Through the framing of the image the mundane, technical world of rebar, T-beams, insula­tion, wall markings, cladding, and welded steel mats is condensed into exciting fields of color, sculptures, and symbols that recall the works of artists such as Mark Rothko, Donald Judd, and Cy Twombly. All of Hensel’s compositions are punctuated by a strip of the ground running across the bottom of the im­age—an optical hint for the viewer. Still, only those who are looking for a work of art truly find it.

Publisher source ↗