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until 20.07. | #3937ARTatBerlin | Galerie feinart berlin shows from 10. June 2023 the exhibition “9 HOURS APART. Photographs from Berlin and Los Angeles” of the artist Michael Dressel.
The life of Michael Dressel tells an extraordinary German-American artist’s biography. Born in East Berlin in 1958, after a failed escape attempt and two years in the GDR penitentiary, he experiences a few short but intense years in the wild pre-Wall West Berlin. Even before the fall of the Wall, he found himself on the West Coast of the USA and made Los Angeles his new home. There he worked for years as a sound editor for numerous Hollywood films, some of which won Oscars and Golden Reels for sound, including the last sixteen Clint Eastwood films, resulting in his appointment to the Oscar Academy. Throughout this time, he regularly commutes between the two metropolises – at home in both cities and equally familiar and foreign.
Michael Dressel, Berlin 2022 © Michael Dressel
The reflection on the daily experience in the world of stars and Hollywood studios and the awareness of their ultimate inadequacy played a special role in his photographic work from the beginning. How many people are there who came to Hollywood full of dreams and hopes and who now eke out an existence in the shadow of the “dream factories”? “On Hollywood Boulevard, the so-called “Walk of Fame”, a never-ending spectacle full of tragic, comic, absurd and sometimes dangerous situations takes place.
Michael Dressel, Los Angeles 2021 © Michael Dressel
In this environment I find human scenarios that are often timeless and point beyond the concrete place.” (MD) The fact that Michael Dressel’s work is often classified under the heading of social documentation only incompletely captures his concern. Without question, social commentary cannot be separated from photographs of people, many of whom have been marginalised by poverty, illness, drugs or strokes of fate. For Dressel, however, this is only the superficial first layer of his pictures.
Michael Dressel, Los Angeles 2021 © Michael Dressel
What makes a picture a good picture is the visualisation of a more fundamental level that is effective and valid regardless of the place and time of the photograph, regardless of the class, race, origin or age of the person portrayed. The exhibition pursues this idea and shows photographs from Berlin for the first time alongside the photographs from Hollywood and Los Angeles. The 9-hour time difference between the two cities represents more than just different time zones: “When I come to Germany, I often feel like I’m coming from a social future…”
Michael Dressel, Berlin 2020 © Michael Dressel
Opening: Saturday 10. June 2023, 5pm until 9pm | 7pm Official Introduction by Dr Enno Kaufhold
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 10. June 2023 until Thursday, 20. July 2023
Ending: Thursday, 20. July 2023, 5pm until 9pm
To the Gallery
Image caption: Michael Dressel — 9 HOURS APART. Photographie aus Berlin und Los Angeles © feinartberlin
Exhibition Michael Dressel – Galerie feinart berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst Berlin – Contemporary Art – Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin
