All images ©Sebastian Lemm
Thanks to Sebastian Lemm for sharing his Strata series with me. It is nice work but I must say that I am of the opinion "once you have seen one, you have seen them all". This might come across as somewhat churlish however, since I can imagine that viewing these images on a computer screen does them no justice at all and am sure they are very impacting and quite sensual when they are experienced as a nice glossy prints hung on a sterile white wall. Perhaps it is the case of the same photograph repeated, because they are not so much representations of trees in their various forms of visible difference, but rather a sustained search for the thresholds of visibility.
Have a read of his personal statement to get a better idea of the concepts he is working with and his various sources of inspiration:
"As a photo-based artist, I see myself as the link between two realities—the one outside of the camera and the one that begins once the photograph has been taken. Rather than documenting or ‘capturing the moment,’ I want to show what is not immediately visible.
My work is informed by nature in a broad sense. Visually, I am fascinated by seemingly random structures in the natural environment and I see parallels to patterns or events in my own life. Taking a more wide-ranging definition of nature, I am attracted to subtleties of human interactions, the subconscious and physics’ theories about dimensions that are outside of our perception. Although these ideas may not be inherently obvious in my images, they do have a significant impact on my artistic process.
Apart from experiences in my own life, inspiration for my work comes from concepts of Romanticism especially those of Caspar David Friedrich, texts by Edmund Burke (Sublime and Beautiful), Gilles Deleuze (Rhizome) and Roland Barthes (Camera Lucida) among others."
Sebastian Lemm, a native of Germany, relocated to New York City in 2000 after receiving a diploma (MFA equivalent) from Berlin University of the Arts. Sean Kelly Gallery featured Sebastian's photo-based work in “Unframed First Look” curated by Adam Fuss, Jack Pierson and Cindy Sherman in 2004. Since then, Sebastian had group and solo shows at galleries and cultural organizations throughout the US, including Platform Gallery (Seattle, WA), Bank Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Ellen Curlee Gallery (St. Louis, MO), and Margaret Thatcher Projects, Pierogi Gallery, Michael Mazzeo Gallery, James Cohan Gallery (auction), Nurture Art, and Art Omi (all in New York).
Critical recognition has come from Art in America, The New Yorker, Art World (UK), NY Arts Magazine, Time Out Chicago as well as 2wice Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Palm Beach Daily News, The Village Voice, and numerous visual art blogs such as Art Moco, Jörg Colberg's Conscientious blog and I Heart Photograph. His work has also been selected for editorial features in H-Magazine (Spain) and Someone’s Garden Magazine (Japan) and was included in the book Light and Lens by Robert Hirsch. In 2008, the Goethe-Instituts in Chicago and New York hosted artist talks with Sebastian Lemm and critics Gregory Volk and Michael Weinstein.
Sebastian’s pieces are included in private and corporate art collections.
