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The good thing about life is to be alive. |
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faces+places, film 2006 This quote from the film faces+places by Udo Rein, alias ReDo, comes from the context of the stripe series 2006. The statement, one of the few spoken in this film, seems to be characteristic of the mood of the film. The works of the stripe series 2006 show fragments of stories, experiences and scenes and a new juxtaposition of them creates new stories. The film and the panels take the observer off into complex structures and unknown stories. The catalogue shows a selection of Udo Rein's stripe series 2006 and gives an insight into the working methods of the artist and the works themselves created in 2006. As in the past few years, the panels arise out of a kind of cascade principle: objects found and collected from journeys, memories and situations held fast by the camera in photo or film, are processed into a film or translated into panels, put together from sequences of film, notes and objects found on location. The pieces on wood in the stripe series 2006 are connected to each other with vertical and horizontal stripes which firstly show how the panels belong to each other and secondly convey mood through colour. The collection of ideas for the panels was predominantly made in 2005; memories which the artist accumulated on journeys were translated into films and photos. The collage allows an assimilation of different materials and invites the observer to different levels of access through this creative transposition. The works, which describe a real or fictional situation invented by Udo Rein, are complete in themselves. In this way Kim lost tells a story: of a picture of a woman, a pair of shoes perhaps left carelessly by
their wearer in the grass, both included with a car door, a photo taken in Cuba and the rear part of a car whose wheel
is formed from the repeated representation of the pair of shoes. Nothing is what it appears to be. Where is Kim? |
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A collection of vivid contrasts are represented in a complex way in this work, they arose from ideas whose source the artist found on journeys to Cuba and Ibiza. The quotation brings the merciless destruction of a country like South Africa to the forefront. The film created within this series shows sequences from the journeys on four stripes which run parallel but in opposite directions. People on the move, walking, the parade of uniformed young men in Cuba returning from an early morning announcement by Fidel Castro, a laughing young woman in a night scene from Ibiza, a security man ... sequences which pass like the film of a life in strips. Before death, it is said, your life flashes before your eyes, high points and low points. Is it really true? Contrasts are a main theme in Udo Rein's work. Opposites are placed next to one another and questioned. Juxtapositions with which the artist chooses to express his ideas could not be more contrasting: Cuba, Ibiza, power, decay, regime, dictatorship, desire, energy, facade, strength, worry, war, death are shown as social inclinations in all their possible and diverse variations. Intensity is strongly expressed. The awareness of his environment sparks off powerful impulses in him, as the artist says himself, and leads to new works. Udo Rein's works pay attention to personal, fictional and invented, but also current inter-cultural, events of our time and puts them to discussion juxtapositions full of contrasts. It can be seen how close the themes lie to one another despite apparent discrepancies and on what a narrow line thinking and being sometimes move on. The works unmistakably emphasise what may be real, what apparent; their messages can even move us, painfully at times. War, death and dictatorship lie nearer to the modern societies of fun and consumption than we thought and also hoped. The representation of a moment, a situation, a mood or even the telling of a story is what moves Udo Rein in the choice of his themes. Unexplained and also unsolved stories challenge the artist to seek an individual solution. The pieces of puzzle are thus put together into the own story or experience of the observer and become a challenge to take up or work on topics in a new way. Mirela Proske |
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©2010 - udo rein