Modell Tier, September 24 2021 — 2 January 2022
The exhibition questions the mutual relationship between animals and humans, through film, photographs, drawings, installations and books.
Artists: Wolf Erlbruch (Germany), Roni Horn (USA), Sanna Kannisto (Finland), Jo Longhurst (UK), Olivier Richon (Switzerland), Michal Rovner (Israel), Thomas Struth (Germany) and Tomasz Gudzowaty (Poland).
Curated by Ute Eskildsen.
Work exhibited, I know what you’re thinking, 4 photographs on mdf; It’s all in my mind, 2 photographs on aluminium; The Refusal (Part II), photograph on aluminium in black tray frame
The works by Jo Longhurst explore the human act of looking, while contemplating the inscrutability of the canine gaze. The titles suggest both certainty and doubt, to underscore the individual agency of the dog. Staring directly at us; asleep, dreaming – eyes firmly closed; averting their gaze from their own image – these photographs of dogs question whether we do know and understand these creatures as we think. A dog is a different kind of vision machine to the human: one more physically engaged with the world, totally unconcerned with image or visual ideals.
A dog portrait is often read as a reflection of the human – a canvas onto which we project our own ideas and concerns. Through these artworks the artist proposes that despite domesticity, and the inextricable intertwining of our two species, the dog retains a distinct animality - a markedly canine approach to the world.
Catalogue [in German]
Photos: Kunsthaus Göttingen