Page 29 - AIT0322_E-Paper

Biala, Tokyo
von • by Gustav Willeit

www.guworld.com

Large urban structures have the ability to make people look

small. This is why the photographic artist Gustav Willeit assigns

them a significant position in the centre of endless monster ar-

chitectures. Although the latter are not actually existing build-

ings but photomontages of seemingly endlessly strung-together

photos of façades taken all over the world, they are symbolic of

the frequently sobering symmetry and monotony of a globally

valid “world architecture”. Because Willeit places the anony-

mous individual figures at the exact intersection of the picture

diagonals, they become heroic protagonists of an inhuman set-

ting. As tiny dots or red spots, they appear to susceptibly disturb

the uniform mass of a dimensionless upscaled building – and to

add a small spark of life to the despicable grid of the soulless

scenery. This distinguishes the works of the Biala series – shown

here as well on pages 28–29 and 44–45 – from Willeit’s Gras se-

ries which already also staged large façade details with an or-

namental quality and rhythmically repeated patterns of forms

and colours. Both series remind of the extremely large-format

portraits of façades produced by the Leipzig photographer An-

dreas Gursky. Willeit’s architectural observations are likewise

for the most part taken from the urban environment and em-
phasize a geometrical guideline. The artist born in Brunico in

South Tyrol furthermore expresses his poetic view of the world

in the form of sensitive and well composed representations of

nature. After his studies at the F+F School of Art and Design

Zurich as well as several years of being employed as an assis-

tant in various studios, Willeit today works as a freelance pho-

tographer in Zurich and Corvara/Italy.