From 24 April to 4 June 2010 Deutsche Börse is presenting the artists from the promotion program of young “Talents” run by C/O Berlin in 2009. Since 2006 C/O Berlin has supported the work of future photographers and the texts of art critics-to-be who are on the threshold between education and career. The “Talents” exhibition series aims to combine the promotion program for photography and art criticism: Each solo exhibition is accompanied by a publication in which images and text engage in a dialogue. After the exhibition at C/O Berlin the art works of the members of “Talents” were shown in various premises of the Goethe Institut worldwide. Finally the exhibition can be seen at the Neue Börse. Artists of “Talents” of 2009 are: Christoph Engel (*1975), Anne Lass (*1978), Oskar Schmidt (*1977) and Ofer Wolberger (*1976). The places in Anne Lass’ photos seem familiar, the people almost recognizable, the situations common, everyday. They show normality – so normal that it’s disconcerting. Where and when were the photographs taken? Who are the people in them? How are they connected? In the search for details that might provide answers, the viewer cannot find or decipher either meanings and identities, or relationships and histories in the photographs of Anne Lass. They are images of deindividualized people who find themselves in places devoid of history – documents of disorientation and interchangeability. Spectators feel confronted with images of their own visual memory. The photography is overlain and merged by the viewer’s own reality, ideas and occurrences.  Christoph Engel’s photographs look at the world and its surface structures from a different point of view from our everyday perspective. In them, dense housing developments take on the appearance of an ornamental mesh of interwoven lines. The flat roofs of countless greenhouses become a thick mosaic carpet. Golf courses in a barren, rocky landscape suddenly start to look like the palm of an outstretched hand. The “divine view” from above allows abstraction into areas and lines and creates an ambivalent overview of formal clarity and treacherous beauty. For the motives visualize the great influence of human activities with its associated impact on ecological systems and radical changes to entire geographical areas which might end in an ecological disaster. Christoph Engel’s photographic series unmasks the authentic free landscape not only as a construction designed by nature, but the images themselves are constructed by the help of Google Earth’s easily accessible materials. Using this method Engel fundamentally questions his role as photographer and creator.  “Live with Maggie” is the title of Ofer Wolfberger’s series resembling a colourful diary of young Maggie. She poses like a typical tourist: watching the sunset at a lake, strolling in a pretty landscape or contemplating modern architecture. The only bewildering element of her familiar-seeming holiday pictures is Maggie herself as she is always hiding her true identity behind a mask. Her clothes also seem to subtlely correspond with her surroundings by reflecting their colour and structure. Maggie is a fictive character created by Wolberger, who pursues the question of identity in these staged photographs. Although the mask is the constant that runs through the series, the change of clothing nevertheless reveals a fluid relationship between individual and environment. Wolfberger shows, on the one hand, how strong the human need is to firmly situate one’s identity, and on the other, how difficult it is to answer the question of where one really belongs. Maggie’s travels are thus and above all excursions in the search for one’s self.  The photographs of Oskar Schmidt are both portraits and interiors. The people and spaces seem familiar, but they remain mysterious and slightly beyond reach. These pictures do not focus on the individual characteristics of the places and people, but much more generally on their forms and postures. The women and girls portrayed are revenants, characters appropriated from the history of art and brought back to life in a new medium: photography. With his photographic panel paintings Oskar Schmidt aims to pursue a painterly principle using an analogue large-format camera. He asks his models to come again and again to his studio to perfect a special expression. However, this intensive search for the perfect expression brings the limitations of photography into focus as it seems impossible to re-produce a painting by photography. The exhibitions and the accompanying catalogues provide young talents with a public forum inviting the audience to think about and discuss on the artists’ works. This concept makes “Talents” unrivalled in Europe. Deutsche Börse Group has supported the “Talents” program for young artists, initiated by C/O Berlin, as a founding partner since its beginnings and has also been on the jury ever since. Since 2007 “Talents” is an annual international competition. More than 400 young photographers applied for the 2009 program. Four photographers are invited to exhibit their work with regard to a common theme. In 2009, the “Talents” exhibition series was themed “Conditio Humana”. In representative work series, the artists conveyed their personal perspective on human beings as physical individuals as well as social beings. The exhibition is open to the public in guided tours. Dates for current public guided tours are announced on the website of Deutsche Börse Group. If you like to take part in a guided tour, please register here sending an e-mail to art@deutsche-boerse.com. | 
