About the work
“Martin Denker’s large scale photographic panoramas are created at the computer. They are montages or non-linear collages that are a consequence of the tension between the principles and philosophies of his teachers at the Dusseldorf School of Photography: these range from phenomena of entropy and dissolution in the image's reproduction process to intrinsically detailed renderings of the complex structural systems of contemporary leisure and mass culture. Denker considers the apex of growth, the point at which the expanding mass of information turns into its opposite thereby becoming ornament. He critically examines whether images and especially photography can at all serve as keys to perceiving and analyzing the world. In his works he combines the adaptive process of photography with the additive gesture of painting and thus formulates his answer to the apocalyptic image flood of today.”
Gregor Jansen, in: Accompanying text for the art project at Campo Bahia, the quarters of the German football team during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
About the artist
born 1976 in Hamburg
lives and works in Dusseldorf
The photo artist Martin Denker studied painting and literature from 1996 to 2000 in Greifswald and transferred to UTSA in San Antonio, USA, in 2000 in order to study painting, photography and digital media. In 2001 he returned to Germany and was a student of the photography class at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf led by Thomas Ruff whose master student he became in 2006. Between 2002 and 2006, he worked as an assistant to Andreas Gursky.