Dieter Nuhr Surrounded by Faraway

To travel the world in the name of art - this is the mantra for German artist #dieternuhr who is back in Italy for another solo show after the great success of his exhibition during the BIENNALE #arte at Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana at St. Marco’s Square in Venice.

From May 3^rd to May 29^th, 2023, the Corner Space of #maxxi, the National Museum of 21^st Century Arts, will host Dieter Nuhr’s new exhibition “Surrounded by Faraway” curated by Dirk Geuer.

Supported by the Brost Foundation, one of Germany’s most significant art and cultural foundations, over 20 photography-based artworks by #dieternuhr with a pronounced pictorial character, painterly modified with digital tools of modern technology, will be on display and celebrate the scenic and cultural diversity of our world.

Dieter Nuhr's art is characterised by a desire to experience and explore the world as a unified habitat and shows the world in a state of transition. Nuhr's digital and photography-based paintings are inventories of a reality that fade away in people's minds and become memories. Nuhr, who subjects his photographs to a digital-painterly process, adds layers of colours over his photographed objects with the help of a programmed, digital brush to show the disappearance of what is real in memory. Only the essence remains of that was originally seen and photographed. This can no longer be described as reality, but as a subjectivised image or memory of it.

Organised by the Association for Art in Public, the exhibition in Rome is in aid of the YOU Foundation - Education for Children in need in an official collaboration with UNESCO. The artist believes that a sustainable world can only be achieved if everyone supports the weakest. Therefore, he has decided to also draw attention to issues such as poverty and hunger by showing portraits of children and people in need from developing countries such as Senegal, Myanmar, and India. Nuhr, who here abandons the medium of photography altogether, approaches classical portraiture in a forceful, digital way, positioning his figures in a geometrically organised space of vertical and horizontal lines. This creates a field of tension in which the figures, which appear completely detached from their cultural environment, are aesthetically equal. Only facial features and clothing provide information about the origin of the figures depicted, which are random encounters, but also family members of the artist, people from the German Ruhr area or images of saints Nuhr has come across on his travels.

The exhibition will be inaugurated in the presence of the artist, the former German Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia and Member of the Board of Trustees of the Brost Foundation, Armin Laschet, UNESCO Special ambassador Dr. h.c. Ute-Henriette Ohoven and the President of the Brost Foundation Prof. Bodo Hombach.

Dieter Nuhr: ”Being invited here to Rome after my exhibitions in Hagen, Venice, and Dakar, is a great honour for me. In the past, culture emanated from Rome towards the world and now I have been called to take the world and my home, the Ruhr area, to Rome.”

Further information in the press release to download