About Cologne, Berlin, Duesseldorf, …

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This set of oil paintings originated 2006, 2007 and 2017 shows people on public places and is up to date as never before!

Banker side by side with unemployed, foreigners walking alongside German girls, homosexuals with baby buggy, father and daughter go hand in hand in times of pedophilia … The pictures show how the public space changes with the people on them, how a multicultural society coins the streetscape.

Theses paintings appear more current than ever in times with large discussion of pros and cons of openness.

Each of the oil paintings describe a public place, a private space in Germany. The place around Cologne Cathedral, Berlin Alexanderplatz or Wallstreet Duesseldorf. When the set of paintings „Around Public Places“ was first shown in 2007, Gallery Heinz Martin Weigand wrote:

Juergen Staeudtner situates very different human beings in urban contexts, which leaves spectators unclear about whether they have an apparent, an accidental or a concrete relation to each other.

The objective of the paintings was to show habits of persons on the public place. The pictures still allow for interpretations of the persons shown, their circumstances and relations between each other.

More present is:

The canvases bear distance, closeness, emotion, indifference, cooperation and conflicts. The communication which is betoken between individuals or groups is lost in time and space immediately, since the references between them do not or apparently not exist. There is no denouement, however countless stories with an open end.

These oil paintings are up to date than ever. In times of refugees all over the world and much discussion of the pro and cons of open societies this 10 year old compositions match reality.

This, to compose stories with open end, is the technical approach of the paintings on canvas, making them so topical.

Today, 10 years later, some of the paintings have been reworked. Brighter colors and less persons make it look more present and fresher.

The oil paintings appear as painted snap-shots but they are composed impressions based on over 4.000 photographs. This allows to show the atmosphere on a public place, to characterize it.

Concept of the work

Public places were a meeting point for centuries. People socialized, made politics and bought their food on the market. To meet others in the public was essential to our lives. Today however, public places in industrialized countries have changed their role since mostly although people walk over them, they are not even perceived on the way from point A to point B as Richard Sennett demonstrated¹.

However, for three reasons public places should be taken into account while analyzing society and the role of people in it. First, to go to work and back home is consuming a lot of our time and most people without a car cross a public place doing so. In addition, while walking over places people tend to act naturally since they feel unobserved. Thirdly public places are one of the rare occasions to see or meet somebody that one would never meet otherwise.

In that way public places are a mirror of society. Demonstrating this and analyzing people’s behaviour is one central objective of my work. The observer should feel a part of the scenario. To get involved with the work means to draw own conclusions on the role of the people, the dependencies between them and the influence of the place itself. The work itself serves as a catalyst to increase sensibility of the reception of one’s life.

In my work anything distracting from the people on the places is eliminated. For instance architecture is completely removed. All pictures are exposed in the afternoon and the viewpoint is slightly elevated. Therefore a series of momentary impressions allows the perception of the relation of people on the places to each other. The place itself can be sensed but its historical dimensions are less important than in the work of Thomas Struth².

The ground of public places is mostly rather monochrome. The light situation and the material of the ground compose an abstract image for themselves. The people on the places often come across like a disturbance of a smooth surface. This amplifies the focus on them and reveals what otherwise would remain unnoticed.

¹ The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities, Richard Sennett, 1992, Norton and Company

² Excerpt from an Interview between Isabelle Graw and Thomas Struth, 1989, Friedrich Christian Flick Collection at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 2005