Sascha Weidner

Sascha Weidner

Sascha Weidner in 2009
Born (1974-08-01)1 August 1974
Georgsmarienhütte, West Germany
Died 9 April 2015(2015-04-09) (aged 40)
Norden, Germany
Nationality German
Education Braunschweig University of Art
Known for Art photography
Website www.saschaweidner.de

Sascha Weidner (1 August 1974[1] in Georgsmarienhütte - 9 April 2015[1] in Norden[2]) was a German Photographer and Artist, who lived and worked in Belm and Berlin. The work of Sascha Weidner deals with the creation of a radical subjective pictorial world.[3] His photographs are characterized by perceptions, aspirations and illuminate the world of the subconscious. His work has been exhibited and published internationally.

Personal life

As a teenager, Sascha Weidner was interested in the arts and was an active painter. From 1992 to 1993 Sascha Weidner lived abroad in Solon, Ohio, USA.[2] After attaining a baccalaureate in 1995 at the Graf-Stauffenberg-Gymnasium in Osnabrück,[2] Sascha Weidner studied Fine Arts and Visual Communication from 1996 to 2004 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brunswick, completing his studies with an honorary diploma.[4] In 2004 he undertook a mentorship, studying fine art photography under Dörte Eißfeldt.[4] After this, Sascha Weidner worked as a freelance artist in Belm and Berlin.

Sascha Weidner's paintings are characterized often by trips that he was able to undertake through various scholarships. In 2004 and 2006 he traveled with the German Academic Exchange Service for several months at a time to Los Angeles. In 2013 he gained a scholarship from the Goethe Institute at the Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto, Japan[5] and in 2014 at the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing, China.[6]

From 2010 to 2012 Sascha Weidner was a lecturer in photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. In 2012 he was appointed as a member of the German Photographic Academy.[7]

Sascha Weidner died on April 9, 2015, due to the consequences of an unexpected heart failure.

For his work he was awarded, among others, the "Stiftungspreis Fotografie" of the Alison & Peter Klein Foundation[8] and in 2010 the Young Art Prize for Film and Media Arts Berlin of the Academy of Arts Berlin.[9]

Sascha Weidner's work has been presented nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions.

Art

Sascha Weidner described himself as a "romantically moved traveler" and his photographs as highly subjective.[10] For him the medium of photography was the artistic means of expression in order to weave together real worlds with the own internal images. From his mostly biographical photo expeditions, picture essays arose about essential questions of human existence.

Over a decade of creating images, an ever evolving picture library came together in which, as the photographer said, "everything is important: Cultural events, disasters, clichés, banalities, Political things"[11] Sascha Weidner composed his works from a large pool, which was composed of family photographs, own work and found or mass media and borrowed images from the history of art. Thereby boundaries between staging and authenticity blurred, to highlight the often unreal, sometimes suggestive atmosphere of reality.[12]

His motives as well as the titles of his works and exhibitions refer to biographical references and metaphors of his own experiences. For example: "Until it hurts", "What remains", "The presence of absence", "Staying is nowhere" or "Beauty remains".[13]

Sascha Weidner's canon of images sprang from the way of life of young people and tells of the "perceptions, longings and visions of those generations who experienced their youth in the 80s, 90s and 2000s."[3] Therefore, Sascha Weidner's approach was very relevant for these periods and gave evidence both of an artistic consideration of actual and imaginary spaces.

In essence, a melancholic perspective on the world marked Sascha Weidner’s point of view. The basic patterns in his image systems are attributed to his very own relationships. He contrasts subjects such as life and death, beauty and transience as well as questioning origin, identity and self-determination. In this sense, Sascha Weidner was not limited to portraying his own environment, but spoke of life itself.

Sascha Weidner's temporary art installations were rooms to be experienced. These were often based on interactions between the media and the viewers. The immediate, authentic and honest methodology Sascha Weidner applied to his work is anchored to the tradition of photographers such as Nan Goldin, Larry Clark or Juergen Teller. His sensitive understanding of composition and coloring in his photographic series also recalls the lightness and transparency of the elemental and symbolic images of Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi.[14]

Selected solo exhibitions

Selected group exhibitions

Awards & grants

Bibliography (selection)

References

  1. 1 2 "HBK-Meisterschüler Sascha Weidner verstorben", Obituary on the website of the HBK Braunschweig, Access date: June 4, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 Estate of Sascha Weidner
  3. 1 2 Inka Schube: Karambolage / Hautnah. In: Förderpreis Dokumentarfotografie 2005. Wüstenrot Foundation, see
  4. 1 2 saschaweidner.de Biography on the website of the artist
  5. ↑ goethe.de Website of the Goethe Institute Japan, 2012.
  6. ↑ goethe.de Website of the Goethe Institute China, April 2015.
  7. ↑ deutsche-fotografische-akademie.com "Bulletin" of the German Photographic Academy, Issue 29, April 2013.
  8. ↑ sammlung-klein.de Website of the Alison & Peter Klein Foundation
  9. ↑ adk.de Website of the Academy of the Arts Berlin
  10. ↑ Alix Landgrebe, Sascha Weidner: On Beauty, Vanitas, Melancholy. In: Sascha Weidner Catalogues, No. 4 – Unveiled, The Sydney Project, Australian Centre for Photography. Berlin 2013, p. 11 f.
  11. ↑ vgh.de VGH Gallery, Hannover 2013.
  12. ↑ btv-fokus.at Press statement for the exhibition "Just let go", fo.ku.s, Innsbruck 2012. (in German language)
  13. ↑ Dorothea Schöne: Enduring Beauty. In: Sascha Weidner: Enduring Beauty. Brunswick 2007
  14. ↑ priskapasquer.com about Rinko Kawauchi (in German language)
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