ANDREAS GEFELLER - SOMA

ANDREAS GEFELLER (1970-)

In his disconcerting photographs, the Düsseldorf-based artist Andreas Gefeller has turned holiday sites on Gran Canaria into bleak Utopian backdrops. Although taken in a conventional, analogue way, the pictures look as if they have been digitally altered. In an age of cyberspace where virtuality and reality permeate each other, this work raises a number of questions: How real is reality and how true are its representations?
In the Art Director's Club competition for young artists in 2001, the picture book SOMA was awarded a prize for its concept and graphic design; additionally, Gefeller's photographic work received the Peter Keetmann Award for contemporary industrial photography in 2002. In this generously conceived publication, the pictures of Andreas Gefeller are placed opposite quotations from different authors and philosophers - Douglas Adams, Karin Boye, Ray Bradbury, Elias Canetti, Aldous Huxley and Fernando Pessoa - who are concerned with the perception of reality.

Texts by Gerhard Glüher, Christoph Ribbat.