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body & soul 31st May – 25th August 2002 Gert Weigelt's photography reflects the stages of his career development, which took him from his beginnings as a dancer to the study of photography in Cologne. His background brings a clear photographic predilection to the fore, and has given him his unique signature. He places emphasis on physicality and plasticity, and composes through them in a rigorously stylised manner. He combines the form of the body with the pose that inspires him. As a result of his effects of aesthetic dramatisation, which leave nothing to chance, the human body can at times be seen from a quite unusual perspective. Weigelt's works are closely related to the classical nude, and yet the individuals he portrays can only in the rarest cases be identified: they are actually depersonalised, hereby obtaining something of an archetypal resonance. The nakedness of the bodies and the manner of portrayal, suggest nuances which are close to the erotic, and yet it is not this which occupies the main focus. The viewer is afforded an intimate impression of the contemplative concentration of the model. Although exhibitionism is involved, Weigelt manages to preserve a more than common distance from his subjects, and so excludes the least hint of voyeurism. His main concern is with the composition and abstraction of surface, form and pose. The human body is always integrated into the picture. His nude photos and portraits have a highly sculptural element. Bodies of a plastic beauty seem to have been carved out of stone, and he pays homage to a physical ideal with origins in the ancient world. In Weigelt's interpretations, the stylised dancer portrait, or portrait of the human body, achieves a new dimension of stunning beauty. Christiane Theobald Click here to tour the virtual exhibition
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