Hans-Christian Schink
Biography
| 1961 | Born in Erfurt |
| 1986-91 | Studies in photography at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig |
| 1990 | Photography programme at the DFJW, Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn/ École Nationale de la Photographie Arles |
| 1991-93 | Postgraduate studies at the HGB Leipzig |
| 1997 | Scolarship of the Stiftung Kulturfonds / Schloss Wiepersdorf |
| 1998 | Grant of the Thüringer Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst |
| 1999 | Grant of the Stiftung Kulturfonds |
| 1999 | Competition "Kunst am Bau" for the Physic and Astronomy Faculty at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, 1st place |
| 2000 | Project support through the Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen |
| 2000 | "Prix Sinar" from the competition "Grand Prix Européen de la Ville de Vevey", Switzerland |
| 2002 | Artist in residence/Villa Aurora - Foundation for European-American Relations, Los Angeles |
| 2008 | REAL Photography Award |
| 2008 | Grant of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung |
Solo Exhibitions (Selection)
| 2009 | Galerie Rothamel, Erfurt |
| 2009 | Galeria Joanna Kunstmann, Palma de Mallorca |
| 2008 | Museo de Bellas Arts, Cordoba, Argentina (with Luis Gonzales Palma) |
| 2008 | Galerie Rothamel, Frankfurt/Main |
| 2007 | Museum Küppersmühle, Duisburg |
| 2007 | Galerie Arnés y Röpke, Madrid |
| 2007 | Museo Obispo Fray José Antonio de San Alberto, Cordoba, Argentina |
| 2006 | Galerie Rothamel, Frankfurt |
| 2005 | Hans-Christian Schink, Photographs, Kunsthalle Erfurt |
| 2005 | Die Peru-Serie, Galerie Rothamel, Erfurt |
| 2005 | Galerie Wäcker und Jordanow/ Galerie Dany Keller, Munich |
| 2004 | Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin |
| 2004 | Galerie Rothamel, Erfurt |
| 2002/03 | ACE Gallery, Los Angeles |
| 2001 | Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles |
| 2001 | Kunsthalle Luckenwalde |
| 2001 | Galerie Rothamel, Jena |
| 2001 | Galerie Bodo Niemann Berlin |
| 2000 | Goethe-Institut, New York |
| 2000 | Architektur Galerie Berlin - Ulrich Müller |
| 2000 | Galerie Rothamel, Erfurt |
| 2000 | Städtische Galerie, Sonneberg |
| 1999 | Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, München |
| 1998 | Galerie Rothamel, Erfurt |
| 1998 | Haus des Buches, Leipzig |
| 1997 | Galerie im Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf |
| 1995 | Grassimuseum, Leipzig |
| 1995 | VOXXX-Galerie Chemnitz |
| 1991 | Kunstfabrik Potsdam |
Group Exhibitions (Selection)
| 2009 | 60 / 40 / 20, Art in Leipzig since 1949, Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig / Kunsthalle der Sparkasse Leipzig |
| 2009 | EAST - For the Record, Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig |
| 2009 | XI. International Festival for New Media Culture, Riga, Latvia |
| 2009 | New Acquisitions, Angermuseum Erfurt |
| 2009 | Veto - Zeitgenössische Positionen in der deutschen Fotografie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg |
| 2009 | XI International festival for new media culture, Riga, Latvia |
| 2008/2009 | Die Tropen, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin |
| 2008/2009 | inside//outside, Museum für Moderne Kunst Duisburg |
| 2008 | Carte Blanche: Freundliche Feinde, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig |
| 2008 | Von Kunst und Politik - Fotografie in der Sammlung des Deutschen Bundestages, Kunst-Raum des Deutschen Bundestages, Berlin |
| 2008 | ING Real Photography Award, Las Palmas II, Rotterdam, Niederlande (Catalogue) |
| 2008 | Museum für Moderne Kunst Küppersmühle, Duisburg |
| 2007 | Reliquias y Ruinas, Centro Cultural Oi Futuro, Rio de Janeiro |
| 2007 | SESC Paulista, Sao Paulo, Brazil (Catalogue) |
| 2007 | Os Tropicos - Die Tropen, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Brazil |
| 2007 | Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| 2007 | Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (Catalogue) |
| 2006 | "Was ist deutsch?", Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg |
| 2005 | Hans-Christian Schink, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo |
| 2005 | Park, Zucht und Wildwuchs in der Kunst, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (Catalogue) |
| 2002 | Kunststoff, Landeskunstausstellung Thüringen, Kunsthalle Erfurt (Catalogue) |
| 2002 | Fragilités, Festival Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse, Frankreich (Catalogue) |
| 2002 | Landschaftsblicke, Galerie artfinder, Fototriennale Hamburg |
| 2002 | East, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig |
| 2002 | heimat.de, Kunst Haus Dresden |
| 2001 | Sense of Space, Noorderlicht Photofestival, Groningen, Netherlands (Catalogue) |
| 2001 | City Scape East, Bauhaus Dessau (Catalogue) |
| 2000 | The generation of transition - Contemporary photographers from Leipzig, FotoFest gallery / ArtScan gallery Houston, Texas |
| 2000 | Grand Prix Européen de la Ville de Vevey, Festival Images, Vevey, Schweiz |
| 2000 | Contemporary German Landscapes - Elger Esser, Candida Höfer, Peter McClennan, Hans-Christian Schink, ArtScan gallery / FotoFest 2000 Houston, Texas (Catalogue) |
| 1999 | InnenSichten, Kunstsammlung Gera (Catalogue) |
| 1999 | Über den Fluß und durch die Wälder, Galerie Rothamel, Erfurt |
| 1998 | Signaturen des Sichtbaren, Kunsthalle Erfurt |
| 1994 | Master's exhibition, HGB Leipzig |
| 1993 | 100 Jahre Fotografie an der HGB Leipzig |
| 1992 | Ost 89,90,91. Bonn, Berlin, Hamburg, Schwerin u.a. (Catalogue) |
| 1990 | DDR-Bilder, Bielefeld |
| 1989 | Leipziger Schule. Leipzig, Berlin, Oberhausen, Hannover (Catalogue) |
Collections
- Angermuseum, Erfurt
- DG Bank
- DZ Bank
- Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
- Heidelberger Zement AG
- Hypovereinsbank
- Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau Berlin
- Kunstfonds des Freistaates Sachsen
- Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden
- Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen
- Ludwig Forum Aachen
- Museum der Bildende Künste, Leipzig
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
- Ruhrgas AG
- Sal. Oppenheim
- Sammlung Deutscher Bundestag
- Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
- Sparkasse Leipzig
- Stadtmuseum, Jena
- Thüringer Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst
- UBS
- Verbundnetz Gas AG Leipzig
- WGZ-Bank
- Winterthur Versicherung
Publications
- Ansichten und Einblicke. Volkswagen-Stiftung Hannover 1992
- Feldsteinkirchen der Prignitz. Perleberg 1994
- Industriearchitektur in Chemnitz. Leipzig 1995
- Vor Ort. Eine Sammlung topografischer Fotografien Ostdeutschlands, Leipzig
- 1997/Ostfildern 2001
- Industriearchitektur in Dresden. Leipzig 1997
- Industriearchitektur in Leipzig. Leipzig 1998
- Hans-Christian Schink - Wiepersdorfer Arbeiten. Stiftung Kulturfonds Berlin 1998
- Hans-Christian Schink - Fotografie. Catalogue, Leipzig 1998
- Arbeitsstipendien 1997-99 des Thüringer Ministeriums für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst. Catalogue, Erfurt 2000
- Hans-Christian Schink - Fotografie II. Catalogue, Leipzig 2000
- Hans-Christian Schink - Fotografie II. Catalogue, Leipzig 2000
- Stadt Land Ost / City Scape East. Ostfildern 2001
- Architektur Landschaft Fotografie. Gebr. Mann, Berlin 2001
- Blink. London/New York, Phaidon Press, 2002
- Hans-Christian Schink – Verkehrsprojekte, Ostfildern 2004
- Hans-Christian Schink – LA, Salzburg 2004
Since the beginning of the 1990s Hans Christian Schink has traced, in different photography series, the appearance of this desire for order. In these he reveals, on the one hand the fascination of the educated artist with architectural details as "finished" compositional models, and on the other hand they reveal a critical dimension in the proportionally tense imbalance between architecture and nature. His pictures however always retain a distance - he captures fictitiously, in a photographic act, the position of the indifferent observer who reproduces simply the apparent, what "is" (what he sees), yet on the other hand (as an inheritance from the German early romantics), an attitude signalising lost proximity, a melancholy of loss.
When Hans-Christian Schink arrives in 2002 in Los Angeles (with a scholarship from the Villa Aurora) he will be interested primarily in the periphery of the urban, which brings to light the moving interplay of different systems of order: on the one hand the objects of order and general economic set-up determined by man's will to create, and on the other hand the "rightness" of nature with its own patterns of growth and passing, sedimentation and washing away. Twenty years before, between 1978 and 1983, the American photographer Robert Adams had explored the social and ecological distortions in the surrounding areas of the Megapolis, in his Californian pictures, so that one does not certainly, from some similarity of motives, go from a secret homage to the master of the precise observation of the inconspicuous. But where Adams mixes in the invisible middle of the world, to which he loans a photographic face, Hans-Christian Schink remains in the position of the outsider, on a Baudelairian stroll, that photographs and interprets only from one's existence in the mode of distance and alienation. Therefore his landscapes have the effect of still-lives, which obviously consume, exhaust, captivate and are brought to rest.
His "L.A. Night" deals with the loss of proximity. He captures Mulholland-Drive and Griffith Park from the city's sea of lights on a small-format, highly photo-sensitive colour-negative film. He obtains strong granular prints from which he enlarges the smallest cut-outs into two-meter formats - with the effect of a corresponding dissolution of the motifs till they near the indefinable. This point of view came to be an excluding procedure - the object that was enlarged became a scheme, a foil, to a sparking view, far from anything of today. The reality remains a fascinating unknown quantity.
Kai Uwe Schierz