The new series of exhibitions at the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal is called "Friendship Request".

She uses her own holdings by inviting contemporary artists to select works that allow a reference to their own work.

That's doubly attractive.

In this way, objects in the museum can be brought into focus that would otherwise not be among the public's favourites, or perhaps not shown at all.

And then, of course, the selection and combination reveal something about the self-image of the invited artists.

Who dares to put their own work next to a recognized masterpiece?

Or who has the courage

completely contrary to expectations and thus forgoing the advertising effectiveness of established classics?

Isn't the friendship conjured up in the title actually put at risk?

Andrew Plathaus

Responsible editor for literature and literary life.

  • Follow I follow

The first to be invited was the photographer Hans-Christian Schink, born in Erfurt in 1961 and now one of the internationally most respected contemporary German photographers, which is something for colleagues such as Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff and the Becher couple want to be called.

Unlike the first four named, however, he does not come from the Becher School;

Schink was trained in Leipzig shortly after reunification – with Joachim Jansong, one of the generally under-sung photographers who died three weeks ago at the age of eighty.

The Wuppertal exhibition by his most prominent pupil has a section, as if in homage, in which Schink confronts drawings with small-format photographs – that would have been Jansong,

Otherwise, however, in the first two decades of his career, Schink certainly suited the popular look of the Becher-Eleven from the Düsseldorf photography school with their preferences for large formats, objectivity and pale colors.

His work cycle “Verkehrsprojekt Deutsche Unity” on motorway construction in East German states during the first decade after reunification attracted attention precisely because of this closeness to the cool Düsseldorf photo aesthetics that were triumphant around the world at the time, and series such as his photographs from wintry Japanese Niigata or “Hinterland”, taken over the past decade in the agricultural areas of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania continue this look.

It is not surprising that Schink combined such photographs with landscapes from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example by Constable, Richard Parkes Bonington, Cézanne, Otto Modersohn, Hodler or Rohlfs.

However, the separation of such pictures from the rest of Wuppertal's permanent exhibition once again makes one aware of what a brilliant inventory this museum calls its own - the namesake Eduard von der Heydt had collected excellently and sent his collection to the museum in his hometown.

The number of Schink's works in the exhibition exceeds the number of pictures in the museum inventory by more than four times: This is due to the large series concept typical of the photographer.

All the more impressive are shots that have been taken out by direct comparison with paintings, such as the pine trees from Schink's "Aqua Claudia" cycle above the Roman aqueduct of the same name, which stand next to a pine painting by Oswald Aschenbach, or pollard willows on a snow-covered field from "Hinterland" next to Courbet's " Wintry landscape near Ornans'.

The fact that there are many more motifs from these two series invites you to think about the singularity of parts of the series.

What about a picture like Claude Monet's "View of the Sea" - by an artist

who also thought and painted in series?

Wuppertal only has this one coastal scene.

How will Schink's photos be shown in a few decades?

Still in the context like here or then isolated?

Fortunately, the house has received several pictures from the "Vietnam" series from 2005 on the occasion of the current exhibition.

The central room of the Wuppertal exhibition is mainly dedicated to small-format pictures from the most recent cycle: "Unter Wasser".

Schink's photographs of aquatic plants and isolated animals have the look and feel of symbolist paintings, which is why Edvard Munch's huge “Starry Night” fits in perfectly with them, even though they represent the exact opposite of Schink's underwater photographs in terms of format and perspective.

And the - literally - free-floating of the algae in one photo is a perfect counterpart to Monet's moving above-water view.

If this exhibition series is continued in this inspired way, the friend request will ensure constant demand in Wuppertal.

Friend request no.

1: Hans Christian Schink

.

In the Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal;

until July 10th.

A brochure for the exhibition costs 12 euros, an opulent photo book with Schink's underwater photographs, published by Hartmann Books, co-published by the museum, costs 59 euros.