EXIT as a life strategy
Florian Reinhardt has been travelling the world as a television producer with prominent protagonists for almost 20 years and has photographed more than a thousand EXIT signs with his iPhone on his filming trips. Nothing in the close-ups indicates place, time or situation; they are detached from a frame of reference and thus point to something universal. Reinhardt has condensed the photos, which were always the result of an impulsive, spontaneous gesture, into a visual archive that can be understood worldwide.
The artist's narrative goes beyond the documentary. From the subjective experience and a spontaneous photo, the sheer endless seriality of the Exit signs creates a universal statement that transforms the banal object into abstraction. Even in Pop Art and above all in the art of Andy Warhol, seriality was the decisive innovation for approaching abstract philosophical ideas.
Endless, impersonal, repetitive, Florian Reinhardt's exit signs touch on human existence, which is always in process. In the process, one decision follows the next; in contact with the world, everyone is free to remain in the moment or metaphorically choose EXIT and thus rebel against the constraints of a fast-moving time and globalized world. The omnipresent EXIT sign serves as a constant reminder to pause in the midst of being driven and to make a decision. It allows escapes from the real world into a stream of consciousness that is never static and is always in the process of becoming.
Together with the media artist Filipo Laizzini, Florian Reinhardt creates videos using a sampling process in which the photos are put together to form a loop and accompanied by driving or calm music. The animated images thus bring photography and video art together and form an independent group of works. They arise from the dynamics of a time that is shaped by pop and club culture and the video game aesthetic.
EXIT signs are omnipresent and yet often overlooked; they are industrially manufactured and understandable regardless of country and culture. Each of the Exit signs takes up the idea of the ready-made, which found its way into the art world through Marcel Duchamp. In his photos, Florian Reinhardt tells of the possibility of constant renewal, of pausing and of changing one's perspective. EXIT describes the individual's field of tension between reality and transformation.
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