Thomas Flechtner

Books

NEWS

Lars Müller Publishers, 2012

News represents a further development of the much-acclaimed work of artist Thomas Flechtner. Whereas in Snow he looked at snow as a metaphor for timelessness, calm, distance, and loneliness, and in Bloom Flechtner used atmospherically condensed studies of plants to examine the boundless colorfulness and movement of grown nature, for his new project News Flechtner collected newspaper front pages over a period of one year, scattered plant seeds from very different countries over them, watered them, and, finally, exposed them to the sun. He recorded the way the “news” was gradually bleached and overgrown with plants in more than one hundred color photographs. Flechtner contrasts the anarchy of nature with the agenda of mankind, while also questioning the fleetingness of memory and the demands made on it in shaping today’s world.

BLOOM

Lars Müller Publishers, 2007

www.lars-mueller-publishers.com

With Bloom, Thomas Flechtner continues to go his own way as an artist. In his internationally acclaimed debut publication Snow, he took viewers by surprise with a compelling visual metaphysics of snow as the exploration of a psychological state. After exhibitions in London, New York, Bilbao, and Tokyo, Flechtner is now free to pursue a new passion, the unbridled color and movement of organic nature, which he examines with lyrical lightness and tremendous precision in these densely atmospheric studies of plants. As a photographer, Flechtner goes in search of the essence of nature, abandoning the ostensible safety of distance and allowing proximity and for the first time also movement.

SPICEGARDEN

édition Ville du canton de Bâle, 2003

85 Fotografien für 85 Patientenzimmer im Klinikum 1 des Kantonsspitals Basel/Universtätskliniken.

SNOW

Lars Müller Publishers, 2002

www.lars-mueller-publishers.com

In Thomas Flechtner’s photographs, snow becomes a metaphor for timelessness, stillness, peace, distance, and loneliness. Both civilization and the untouched countryside succumb to the gentle weight of this element. These images make the viewer long for silence and transparency.