Z / I / S / Ls

In addition to the series LS and S, with which Beate Gütschow gained early recognition, the book also presents two new series: In the series I, she draws on the aesthetics and techniques of advertising and product photography, demonstrating how unspectacular und used objects can be transformed into covetable objects with the help of precise staging. The manipulation is created through lighting and mise-en-scène, without any digital intervention. In her most recent series Z, she interlinks photography and drawing, taking a documentary approach for the first time. The object of her investigation is a site north of the Central Railway Station in Berlin, where the first panoptical prison in Germany once stood - a star-shaped building with a central watchtower, which was erected in 1849 and held political prisoners between 1941 and 1945. The book includes an index of all hitherto published works.
Gütschow's (b. 1970) works have been presented in important institutions and are included in significant collections, including the Guggenheim and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Berlinische Galerie, the Kunsthalle Hamburg, the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, the Kunsthaus Zu¨rich, the SFMOMA, San Francisco, and the LACMA, Los Angeles. The artist lives and works in Berlin and Cologne.

»Presented in lightboxes the objects that have served their time and now stand at the end of their value chain appear as cannibalized components and eerie revenants of our consumption culture.«
Florian Ebner about I