Elger Esser Nocturnes

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is delighted to announce an exhibition by the artist Elger Esser. This series of photographs and heliogravures titled Nocturnes was produced in 2010 in the eponymous Normandy village, which inspired Claude Monet's water lilies. Since his formal education Elger Esser has been studying landscape photography. Bolstered by work from the great 19th century photographers, like Henri le Secq and Gustave le Gray, known for their realist landscapes, he is fascinated by the descriptions of nature that Flaubert and Maupassant exchanged. These influences led him to capture landscapes which were often bare, void of any human presence. In Giverny, Elger Esser worked at night in colour but also in shades of grey. He shows nature as dense, silent and a little disordered, as if abandoned. A long exposure time in black and white brings a powerful, white light which floods the shapes until they disappear. Contrasts are created in crepuscular colour landscapes opening out to a fantasy imaginary world. Born in 1967, Elger Esser spent his childhood in Rome. Entering the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf he joined the Becher's class, founders of the Düsseldorf School, where he acquired a strong mastery of all photographic processes. Until October 2011 his heliogravures will be exhibited in Basel at the Kunstforum Baloise. In 2010 a large retrospective called Eigenzeit was dedicated to him at the Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart, then at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Arnhem in the Netherlands. Elger Esser has participated in numerous photography biennials and group exhibitions, notably in 2011 at the Guggenheim in Venice. For any further information about the exhibition, please contact Elena Bortolotti, tel. 01 42 72 99 00, [email protected]. For press inquiries, please contact Alessandra Bellavita, [email protected]. For visual elements, please contact Zahra Khozeimeh-Alam, [email protected].