303 Gallery is proud to present Florian Maier-Aichen’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery. A selection of large and small-format photographs continue the artist's pursuit of new possibilities within the medium.
Known for his novel approach to image-making, Florian Maier-Aichen embraces both analog and digital techniques to create pictures that conflate the distinction between reality and invention. His photographs are primarily shot with an 8x10-inch camera, using film stock and printing processes on the verge of obsolescence. In creating his images, Maier-Aichen favors vantage points that are well-established as photogenic, seeking out locations that tie into the history of photography while also being iconically beautiful. Picture-perfect vistas and commercial backdrops of the American West are recast as generative grounds for experimentation. These sites and their naturally theatrical lighting provide an ideal counterpoint to post-war industrial Germany and the overcast, neutral skies that define the rigorously formal images of Bernd and Hilla Becher and their adherents, a way of revisiting the German romantic landscape on overdrive.
Florian Maier-Aichen was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1973. He studied at the School of Photography and Film, University for Gothenburg, Sweden and the University of Essen, Germany before earning his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain. His work is represented in the public collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. The artist lives and works in Cologne, Germany and Los Angeles, CA.