Matthias Hoch

Matthias Hoch’s photographs are images of contemporary urbanity. In lucid compositions, his photos expose the materials of the modern age in all of their austere sensuality. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, they are ‘adequate images for postindustrial society.’ Objects are positioned precisely and with a keen sense of surface quality in the pictorial format and often evoke irritatingly ambiguous and puzzling effects by virtue of the artist’s choice of scale and perspective. Beginning with the rapidly changing urban landscapes of eastern Germany, the photographer (*1958) has been exploring the ubiquitous formal language of modern European urban development since his days as a student at the Leipzig Kunsthochschule. The views he presents seem virtually impossible to localize. They document Hoch’s critical, analytical approach to the space around us, yet they also exhibit a remarkable sculptural quality.