Germany

Kurt Laurenz Theinert

Biography

Kurt Laurenz Theinert (b. 1963) is a German photographer and light artist, whose work concentrates on visual experiences that do not attempt to reference anything visually, but strive for an abstract reductive aesthetic. This wish for a more de-materialised medium has led him from photography to working with light.

With the aid of software developers Roland Blach and Philipp Rahlenbeck, he has created an ‘image instrument’ (visual piano) on a MIDI-keyboard basis, that allows him to translate his artistic intentions into live performances while configuring time with light. Collaborating with sound artists and dancers has enriched his work, not only by adding another, non-material medium, but through a constant refining and monitoring of his own artistic stance.

He is represented by Galerie bildkultur in Stuttgart, and Baumgarte Art Consulting in Bielefeld.

Timeshifts uses a typical photographic principle to represent time in a new way and make the ephemeral visible. Taking advantage of the fact that negative and positive mutually neutralize themselves in colour, brightness and contrast, Timeshifts only shows the change in time - all other image content neutralizes to 50% gray. By overlaying two separate moments in time, Timeshifts provide a new spatial vision of space and time.

Any attempt to assign meaning to the photographic image is usually linked to what is depicted. In Concret Photography, the act of representation reveals neither content or meaning, all it does is refer – an act of defiance – to the picture itself, to how it was produced by a camera and to the premises of looking at photography.

In this series of diptychs, the first image is paired with the same point of view in the opposite direction rotated by 180°. The Counter Worlds series examines the subjectivity of perception, with the two views combining to create a dialogue that will never be resolved.