Thibaut Henz
Permitted to see through the lens, darkly, Henz treats us to their photographic visions.
Hunched, or spiraling, or oozing objects captured by Thibaut Henz are removed from their natural forms. Snipped from their expansive existence they are aestheticised, anesthetized hard and pulled into a picture, out from reality and through an eye in the artist’s mind. Here candy blossoms can crackle down like electric snow, their silver tree scales skip away from light into the night. Somehow the artist shows spilling flowers overflowing the plant. Throughout, there is a fascination with the wonky and the witchy, the gothic, the neo romantic - themes inevitably manifesting from the subject matter of the work, but also carried with intention into the work’s composition. The organic is set against the synthetic with the effect of flatting difference. Henz’s choice use of colour and lighting seeps into an aesthetic that is stylistically graphic and meticulously layered. The artist attaches nondescript titles to their work, employing soft focus light and featuring objects with crisp edges. Treading a path to birth a genre, these principle styles dominate the structure of those images, while the caress of chiaroscuro born from a strong camera flash does some heavy lifting.
No context. Only image.
Without context it can be hard to make out what an artwork is. However the artist’s practice has developed in such a way that their photography insists upon abstraction from context, isolating their images to such a degree that Henz forces pure aesthetics to the fore. The artist thinks of their work as snapshots sliced from reality, but there is without doubt elements of magic or mysticism that generates from the images captured by Henz. We have the expected content in the form of looming trees and the exquisitely contorted ribcages of friends or lovers, and also the surprising; a fascination with tree bark that verges on the hallucinatory, Henz’s identification of texture as a subject as opposed to the object that carries it, and the artists mastery of serialisation - but with a casual disregard for narrative. Stepping from architecture across to imagemaking, as the artist has done, is not unusual - but what draws attention is the way in which these images fall together, each in its place while refusing comprehensible sequence. Henz suggests a deeper underlying plan, a blueprint that maps another realm swirling beneath the scenes, coming together under the watchful eye of the artist.
Text by Jonathan Ferguson
Biography Thibaut Henz
born 1988 in Liège, Belgium
Education
2012-2018 Visual communication at Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany
2009-2012 Architecture at Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany
Exhibitions (selection)
2020
No true self, Center for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Australia
Ars viva 2020, Kunstverein Hamburg, Germany
2019
Ars viva 2020, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany
KUNST GEGEN RECHTS, Botschaft / Uferhallen, Berlin, Germany
Born to be Bauhaus #3, Kunsthaus, Erfurt, Germany
Fragments (SOLO with Guillaume Delleuse), Kunsthaus, Erfurt, Germany
Manifest of Practice, Landesvertretung des Freistaats Thüringen, Berlin, Germany
Antarctica. An Exhibition on Alienation, Kunsthalle Wien, Museumsquartier, Vienna, Austria
2018
Academy Positions - POSITIONS BERLIN Art Fair, Flughafen Tempelhof, Berlin, Germany
Reframe Bauhaus, Kulturfabrik, Apolda, Germany
Function is a function is... Where does anything go?, Villa, Weimar, Germany
Grand Ouvert - Bauhaus photography at its finest, Kunsthaus, Erfurt, Germany
Liaisons Latentes (SOLO), Gallery Hammerschmidt + Gladigau, Erfurt, Germany
How To Beat The February Blues, The ballery, Berlin, Germany
2017
Public Keys, Baumwollspinnerei, Leipzig, Germany
Prizes/Residencies/Scholarships
2019
Fogo Island Arts, residency
Ars viva 2020, award
2018
Bauhaus Essentials, award
Born to be Bauhaus, award
2017
Deutscher Fotobuchpreis 2018, shortlist
2016
GRAFE Kreativpreis, award
Bilder-Bank-Preis, award, with Leica Foto International
Bauhaus Essentials, award
Studio Vortex by Antoine D‘Agata, residency
2015
Bauhaus Essentials, award
Works by Thibaut Henz
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Untitled
2019 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2018 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2018 / Fine art print / 35 x 50 cm / 13.8 x 19.7 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2018 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2018 / Fine art print / 35 x 50 cm / 13.8 x 19.7 in (framed)
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Untitled
2019 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 35 x 50 cm / 13.8 x 19.7 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2018 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2019 / Fine art print / 35 x 50 cm / 13.8 x 19.7 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)
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Untitled
2021 / Fine art print / 50 x 35 cm / 19.7 x 13.8 in (framed)