How many times have you been driving along and seen something pass by- a landscape, a fountain, a clever billboard – and you think, I have to get a picture of that. You reach into your bag, take out your phone, and snap a handful of shots.
These photos are almost always different from what we imagine they will be. The perspective creates weird angles, things aren’t framed carefully, and so the image draws the viewer’s attention more to the moment in which the picture was taken than to whatever was actually trying to photograph.
Photographer Florian Reinhardt’s EXIT series centralizes and elevates the postural dimension of these captured moments. For the past ten years, Reinhardt has been snapping shots of EXIT signs across the world – basically, whenever he comes across a sign, he pulls out his smartphone and takes a picture of it.
These images, which record markers of departure, exist in a state of perpetual passage – exits are everywhere, we are always moving towards an exit. There’s probably something in there about life, about attention, about the ubiquity of certain signifiers – but we’ll let you decide that for yourself. The exhibition at Galerie Breckner is a great place to start.
Departure also plays a material role in this exhibition, as Reinhardt himself lost his house in the recent flooding in North Rhine-Westphalia. The artist, in collaboration with Galerie Breckner and the General-Anzeiger Bonn, will donate all of the proceeds from the exhibition to a charity for victims of the flooding.
An exhibition of Florian Reinhardt’s Exit series opens Saturday, August 7th with the artist in attendance, at Galerie Breckner.
Galerie Breckner, Altstadt 7m 40213 Düsseldorf
August 7 – September 3, 2021