Printed Matter – Set 6 from the Collection of the Fotomuseum Winterthur

The exhibition Printed Matter – Set 6 from the Collection of Fotomuseum Winterthur focuses on small publications, artists’ posters and photographic books from the past 40 years and sets a counterpoint to the large photographic cycles and tableaux that are the mainstay of the Fotomuseum Winterthur Collection. It was only a matter of time before photographers and artists began to explore the aesthetic possibilities of the print media by deploying the visual structures of newspapers and books in their own works.

Initially the preserve of conceptual artists such as Ed Ruscha or Hans-Peter Feldmann with their small, unprepossessing publications, now there are many photographers and artists who produce such “printed matter”. Michel François and Lidwien van de Ven, for instance, reproduce their photographs in advertising poster format and display them directly on the wall. Other photographers, such as Boris Mikhailov, tend to publish their documentary or narrative photographs in the form of photo books, rather than as individual images.

Some contemporary artists also use the printed image as the basis for their own compositions: Daniele Buetti scrawls famous company logos and messages onto pictures from fashion magazines, while Suky Best uses collage to create fictional tabloid-style visual narratives and Sarah Charlesworth strips the front page photos of the Herald Tribune out of their textual surroundings, thereby highlighting the ebb and flow of interest in daily news images.

The exhibition was curated by Thomas Seelig.