Nacht

Artificial Stages devoid of Actors The photographs of Moritz Partenheimer (b. Munich, 1979; lives and works in Munich) capture the peculiar and sometimes mysterious charm that public places and spaces exude at night. There is something alien and unapproachable to his deserted parking lots, desolate parks, and abandoned athletic facilities; some have the sinister aura of film sets the actors have fled. Like a movie director, the artist plays a sophisticated game with the viewer’s imagination. He trains his lens on fairly unspectacular scenes, places frequented by large numbers of people day after day: their traces are impossible to overlook, but they themselves are absent from the pictures. Partenheimer explores the forbidding sides of the urban landscape to reveal its bizarre beauty, lending his subjects a distinctive identity. In formally austere pictures defined by his rigorous focus on few selected objects, he paints the portrait of a fascinating surreal nocturnal world. Moritz Partenheimer’s first monograph presents several series of photographs he shot in the United States between 2008 and 2014. With an introduction by Matthias Harder.