MESSE / HINTERHOF
Projektbüro DFI e.V.Wendelin Bottländer
Info: They are temporary architectures – stage sets captured by Wendelin Bottländer (b. 1959) in his series MESSE. In the early 1980s he was out with his 35mm camera at trade fairs where industries presented their products and visions: at the Equitana horse fair in Essen, the Haus & Garten fair, Drupa (printing and paper), the plastics fair and EuroShop in Düsseldorf, at the Anuga food fair in Cologne, or at the Hannover industrial fair. The 22 photographs depict temporary spaces built into vast halls, decorated with flowerpots and tablecloths or designed in a sober, representative manner. Whether tanning systems, supermarket checkout systems, product displays for corn cobs or leather shavings for upholstered sofas – at the industrial and consumer fairs of West Germany industry representatives met under suspended ceilings to do business. The women wear colorful dresses, the men gray jackets, white shirts, ties, and mustaches. It is a bygone era, preserved as if under glass. (…) In the second room, Wendelin Bottländer’s long-term project HINTERHOF is presented for the first time. For 17 years – and continuing to this day – he has photographed a backyard from a fixed vantage point on the second floor of a house. Always using the same perspective, he makes the transformations of the site visible. For the exhibition, a selection of 300 images has been compiled and is shown on a monitor in chronological sequence: from a screw trade to a cultural venue, from wasteland to new development area. (…)
