* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Hundreds of meters above the ground with a climbing harness, hanging out of an open helicopter, Zirwes composes his graphical abstracting photographs. His work shows patterns, structures, connections, boarders, uniformities and contrasts but also current political and sociocritical themes. The orthogonal view of his photographs reduces the space into two dimensions. Superficially the pictures don’t tell a story but allow an unemotional, aesthetical view on a ‘real-picture-graphic”. The content of the picture, through its abstract appearance, seems like an exemplary glance ‘ not really touchable but still exactly classifiable.
But as soon as you step closer to the picture the dots and lines begin to unscramble, they turn into humans, buildings and recognizable figure parts. More and more details like the character of the surface, people in the picture and the still existing traces of their actions can be discovered. The goal is to create an artificial over-reality, that increases the tension in terms of content as well as in terms of visuals. The viewer has to ask himself if the seen is reality or fiction.
"Zirwes captures the unseen patterns of our world by hanging out of a helicopter and snapping perspective-bending photographs. His images are a lens onto random and manmade beauty, and they hit on my love for unexpected patterns."
