Tomas Erhart, diary 0244. Copyright Tomas Erhart.
The Gallery SCALA (Berlin, Germany) presents his ‘CellPhonology and the mobile diaries’ from through March 10th, 2009. For many years Erhart has been experimenting with the artistic styles of the CellCam. He christened his results ‘CellPhonology’: In his portfolio of thousands of snapshots, shot with the in-built camera of his cellphone, Erhart expresses his radically new visual language. “CellPhonology translates the language of the artistic tradition of Polaroid and Lomography into the digital language of the 21st century.”
The pictures are documents of Erhart’s life in the fast lane, between shootings, travels, women, sex and of the numerous obscure faces of his beloved hometown, Berlin. The Gallery SCALA shows a selection of 20 pictures in different formats, all samples of Erhart’s visual diaries, the ‘mobile diaries’.
It is an emotional, intoxicating, and very personal trip through the artist’s life, mind and creative work.
‘CellPhonology and the mobile diaries’ is in its visual language the consequent succession of his 2005 exhibition ‘5PM’. Just as his pictures then caused a lot of furore, does now ‘CellPhonology’ confront the viewer with unsettling impressions; colours and shapes blurred, the shots themselves unmodified and authentic, expression of the utmost creative intensity.
Erhart, a well-known and awards-winning director of photography (e.g. works with Oskar Röhler, Volker Schlöndorff) is specifically looking for the out of focus raw material of the single take of movies. The single frame that remains invisible and therefore hosts the potential of indeterminacy. He explicitly transfers the parameters of light and motion blur into his own, unmistakable artistic aesthetics. His only guide is chance.
Therefore Erhart’s project ‘CellPhonology’ is committed to a specific philosophy: the willful restriction in the use of technical devices can express an attitude towards life that focuses only emotion and the ‘now and here’.
Furthermore, the artist will be presenting the additional website www.CellPhonology.com. The site will be launched Spring 2009.
