Angelika Platen. Zwiegespräche

On the occasion of Angelika Platen’s 80th birthday on 19 February 2022, Michael Haas Gallery is pleased to present a selection of her “Platen Artists”. The photographs enter into a dialogue with artworks from the gallery’s inventory, with paintings and sculptures by Eva Aeppli, Georg Baselitz, Almut Heise, Leiko Ikemura and Markus Lüpertz, among others. At Kunst Lager Haas, they create an extraordinary interplay between photographed artist biography and artwork.

For half a century, the photographer has concentrated on portraits of artists. At the end of the 1960s, she began her “Platen Artists” series with pioneering personalities such as Beuys, Broodthaers, Darboven, Gilbert & George, Koons, Polke, Richter or Warhol. She shows the artists in the context of their works, developing surprising new compositions again and again. In a relaxed dialogue with the photographer, the artists seem to encounter the viewers personally, and new aspects of their work become visible.

Since 1998, retrospectives of her work have been shown at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; the Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg; the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden; the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Bologna; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; the Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst, and the Willy Brandt Haus, Berlin, among others. In addition, her photographs are represented in numerous institutional collections. Angelika Platen lives and works in Berlin and the South of France.