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29 march 2024, Flor Linckens

Last chance: the presence of absence in the works of Axel Hütte

ENIGMATIC | Flower - Wood - Growler, AKINCI. Photo: Peter Tijhuis

Until 6 April, AKINCI in Amsterdam is presenting a solo exhibition of the German photographer Axel Hütte, an artist renowned for his landscapes and still lifes that delicately blur the lines between reality and imagination. The exhibition spotlights his recent floral still lifes and a series of landscapes he created in Antarctica and Italy.

Hütte's works are often marked by a profound absence that is so palpable it demands all attention. In these compositions, we find neither people nor animals, nor any narrative. The photographer started his practice with architectural photography, documenting empty streets, bridges and subway stations. Later, his focus shifted towards more natural or cultivated landscapes — that often showed even less evidence of human presence. His mysterious and somewhat alienating works have a painterly quality and generally seem to be detached from time and place. Some of his landscapes refer to the sublime, for instance, when he captures majestic mountain ranges or vast glacier formations.

Axel Hütte, Gerlache_Strait-1, Antarctica, 2017, AKINCI

The artist is not so much interested in an exact replication of reality, but rather, it seems that Hütte aims to steer and complicate our perception and imagination. A kind of tension arises: on one hand, the images do not readily let you in, but on the other, they carve out space for a more personal interaction with the landscape, unencumbered by historical or cultural connotations. In these landscapes, that occasionally contrast our human visual experience, he plays with our expectations around perspective and reflection, injecting a layer of mystery to a world that we often no longer experience as such.

At AKINCI, he presents a series of floral still lifes in which he has inverted the colour spectrum on the negative. This technique transforms their shadows into enigmatic, spectral glows, against black backgrounds that nod to the still lifes of the Baroque era. Yet, the photographer works surprisingly analog, using a heavy large-format (plate) camera and exposing his images with extended exposure times.

ENIGMATIC | Flower - Wood - Growler, AKINCI. Photo: Peter Tijhuis

The artist has traveled the world for his practice, capturing all of the continents. For previous projects, he photographed everything from nocturnal metropolises to ancient Greek and Roman excavation sites. Intrigued by the narratives of 'explorers' [who 'discoved' areas where people had lived for centuries] Hütte traced the paths of conquistadors in South America. Some of these works were printed on transparent foil, which he then stuck onto a mirror, creating additional layers of depth and effect.

Hütte was born in Essen in 1951 and was educated at the famous Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he studied under the influential artists Hilla and Bernd Becher. They left their mark on a group of German photographers who would form the Düsseldorfer Schule, including Axel Hütte, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth. Hütte also received scholarships that enabled him to study in London and Venice for a while. The artist's work has been included in the collections of Huis Marseille, ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Museum Voorlinden, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, AkzoNobel, K21 (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen), Centre Pompidou, Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), Deichtorhallen (Hamburg), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Museum De Pont and Fotomuseum Winterthur.

Axel Hütte, Marignano 2, 2017, AKINCI. Photo: Peter Tijhuis

The exhibition 'ENIGMATIC | Flower - Wood - Growler' by Axel Hütte will be on view at AKINCI in Amsterdam until 6 April 2024.

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Flor Linckens

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29 march 2024, Flor Linckens

Last chance: the presence of absence in the works of Axel Hütte

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