WOLFGANG VOLZ
Yangshou
1984 / 2004
C-Print
75 x 50 cm BH
Inv.-Nr. 090.010.0400

WOLFGANG VOLZ
Am Lijiang
1984 / 2004
C-Print
75 x 50 cm BH
Inv.-Nr. 090.010.0401

The magnificence of the Chinese landscape is the subject of a series of photographs taken by photographer and photojournalist Wolfgang Volz on a trip to China in 1984. Wolfgang Volz, who graduated from the Folkwangschule in Essen in 1974, has since had numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, but has also worked for several decades for technical and scientific publications such as «Bild der Wissenschaft» and «GEO». He has also been friends with Christo and Jean-Claude since the early 1970s and has officially documented their major projects photographically and in some cases supervised them as artistic and technical director.

Just as the Christo works and their photographs are characterised by categories such as beauty and the sublime, this also applies to Wolfgang Volz’s China photographs. “The landscape is not a staffage for the depiction of people, but the wide view that Volz chooses allows people to merge into the landscape, makes them a part of i”,’ is how Peter Pachnicke puts it[1] and refers to the effect of the photographs on traditional Chinese ideas of paradise from the 16th century, which were inked onto silk hanging scrolls with ink and colours. In Chinese belief, these ideas of paradise are not located in the afterlife[2], as in other cultures, but can be found in the landscape of this world. In the fantastic tales, the islands in the East Sea, mountains in the west or south of China and the fauna and flora of southern China are repeatedly recognisable in the poetic descriptions. In his views of China, which appear dark, heavy and mysterious due to the colourfulness of the prints, Volz shows that the magic and rugged grandeur of this landscape have survived into modern times.

Ute Riese, 2008

Literature:
DKM Foundation, Lines of Silent Beauty, Duisburg 2008, pages 134 – 137.

[1] Ludwig Gallery, Oberhausen Castle 2002 / 2003.

[2] Wolfgang Bauer, China und die Hoffnung auf Glück: Paradiese, Utopien, Idealvorstellungen in der Geistesgeschichte Chinas, 2nd ed., Munich 1989.