Jonas Kamm exhibits at the photo festival »Les Rencontres d'Arles«

29.8.2021

It is with great pleasure that we announce Jonas Kamm’s participation at the renowned photo festival »Les Rencontres d'Arles«, taking place this summer from July 4 through August 29, 2021. Jonas Kamm, who was, until last year, a student of Folkwang University’s B.A. photography program, has been invited by photo curator Sonia Voss to represent our university at the Louis Roederer Discovery Award, featuring eleven international institutions and artists. Jonas’ series »The Inhabitants« from 2020 will be on display in the city center of Arles, in the Église des Frères Prêcheurs, together with works by Farah Al Qasimi, Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Mariana Hahn, Ilanit Illouz, Tarrah Krajnak, Massao Mascaro, Zora J Murff, Aykan Safoğlu, Andrzej Steinbach, and Marie Tomanova.

Jonas participates in the exhibition with two different series. First, his series »The Inhabitants«, the result of a hybrid production process, at the crossroads of architecture, sculpture, and photography. These images—two-dimensional renderings drawn from 3D virtual space—initially take shape in a space modeled by the artist with the aid of computer software. Kamm then, using virtual tools, sculpts figures based on a texture that he has previously »harvested« with the camera from his physical environment. Once the figures have been shaped, the software—simulating the tools of photography—permits the artist to choose an angle and to adjust, from a practically unlimited spectrum of possibilities, his light sources, his focus, his aperture, etc. Kamm’s figures, vaguely anthropomorphic, appear as intermediaries between the real and immaterial worlds. The reductive character, the unclassifiable nature of these images turns them into vectors of inchoate narratives, carriers of a potential meaning which has yet to be defined and which remains mysterious, opening a void that we are invited to fill.

Furthermore, Jonas shows the first parts of a new series which is currently in progress: »Parametric Archeology«. It takes off from the purely economic goal of creating a small program that helps to generate shapes in an automated and efficient way. A freely chosen form runs through various modifiable parameters and multiplies itself in various slightly modified forms. After having been selected by the artist, the resulting output presents itself as if being arranged on an examination table. Forms and arrangement play with the concepts of the archive or the archaeological excavation, yet they merely refer to digital inputs and processes. In Jonas’ words: »This rather absurd play with something we are supposed to know, but what, in fact, escapes our understanding, is fun for me.«

During the opening week in early July, the jury will bestow the Louis Roederer Discovery Award, which comes with an acquisition worth 15,000 euros. Furthermore, the public will vote for the Public Award which is worth 5,000 euros for an acquisition.