Stephan Reusse, John Baldessari, LA, 1989/87 - Courtesy of the artist and Parrotta Contemporary Art.
TITLE_NAME :
Collaborations
06/02/2026 - 27/03/2026
Parrotta Contemporary Art
Brüsseler Str. 21
50674 Cologne
parrotta.de
The Parrotta Contemporary Art gallery will present works by photographer and media artist Stephan Reusse simultaneously at its locations in Cologne and Burg Lede in Bonn. The two-part exhibition focuses on two central themes within his extensive oeuvre: the conceptual portrait series " Collaborations" in Cologne and the thermographic works in Bonn. Both groups of works are part of a multimedia body of work that has explored the conditions, possibilities, and limitations of photographic image production for decades.
His interest in photography lies not only in its representation, but also in its use as a technical process that generates meaning in performative and relational processes, opening up transitions between visibility and invisibility, presence and absence. Stephan Reusse highlights the performative dimension not only in front of the camera, but sometimes also in the development process of photography itself. To this end, he himself entered the international performance art scene in the early 1980s. For example, he made classics of photographic history or life-size photographs of elephants and giraffes from his "Germany Safari," which had previously been made to disappear using a complex chemical process, visible again before an audience by scrubbing the large-format images with a bucket and broom while standing on a tall ladder.
06/02/2026 - 27/03/2026
Parrotta Contemporary Art
Brüsseler Str. 21
50674 Cologne
parrotta.de
The Parrotta Contemporary Art gallery will present works by photographer and media artist Stephan Reusse simultaneously at its locations in Cologne and Burg Lede in Bonn. The two-part exhibition focuses on two central themes within his extensive oeuvre: the conceptual portrait series " Collaborations" in Cologne and the thermographic works in Bonn. Both groups of works are part of a multimedia body of work that has explored the conditions, possibilities, and limitations of photographic image production for decades.
His interest in photography lies not only in its representation, but also in its use as a technical process that generates meaning in performative and relational processes, opening up transitions between visibility and invisibility, presence and absence. Stephan Reusse highlights the performative dimension not only in front of the camera, but sometimes also in the development process of photography itself. To this end, he himself entered the international performance art scene in the early 1980s. For example, he made classics of photographic history or life-size photographs of elephants and giraffes from his "Germany Safari," which had previously been made to disappear using a complex chemical process, visible again before an audience by scrubbing the large-format images with a bucket and broom while standing on a tall ladder.