Formation

Erik Niedling’s work, Formation, is a special form of repetition: it brings back tradition and repeats tradition, but transforms this reconstruction through a subtle arrangement in its deconstruction. The recurrence of the images throughout the work registers a difference in and with the images—in the only assumed identical material. In the studio, almost secretly, negatives are transformed into positives that only look as if they are negatives. The original manipulations, the retouching and the corrections, are still visible—and last but not least, they appear to shine, although they come out of the darkness. The function of the enlargement of the plant images that played a central role in the photography of the Neue Sachlichkeit is taken over here through this transposition of the negative. It produces a new perspective that alienates the seemingly familiar, morphs, and transforms. In this way, Erik Niedling creates images that visually transcribe the ambivalence of the Neue Sachlichkeit’s visual program and still remain loyal to the factual unemotional approach of the photographs used. He generates a visual tilt that leads to the unanswerable question, what is it about now: about positive or negative, documents or works of art, historical material or his artistic recreations. At the same time, that is precisely what it is about: positive and negative, documents and works of art, historical material and its recreation. New images for an old ceremony, that is no longer the same. (Excerpt from Formation, Text by Bernd Stiegler, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2008)