COVER magazine’s sister company, Vitruvian Arts Consultancy, presents ‘Sky.Lines’ – an exhibition by German photographer Christopher Hauser in Lloyd’s Register’s Richard Rogers building at the Gallery@LR, London, until 3 July 2014.
Buildings are the focus of this show; it runs concurrently with the London Festival of Architecture, which offers citywide events throughout June. Architecture from San Francisco to Sydney, from Chicago to Tokyo, features alongside urban monuments, in Hauser’s first solo show in the UK.
All of the works in the airy space feature the sort of tall buildings that dominate a skyline with their imposing silhouettes. These structural inhabitants of the powerful metropolis are seen with a detached gaze from high perspectives or across a body of water. The multitude of activity that takes place within these cities is hidden in the miniature details deep within the shot: the blurred headlights of a moving car, a parasol in a rooftop garden, a figure on the pavement or a park bench. The city is studied as a landscape, with its horizons revealed.
Based in Munich, Christopher Hauser has been obsessed with photography since he was a young teenager, after picking up a Leica that was lying around at his family holiday home in Austria. His travels have taken him to many major cities across the world, where he has captured skyscrapers in his lens, day and night. Accessing locations that provide the necessary distances between camera and subject tends to be a challenge. He has regularly been approached by police and asked to move on as he sets up his sizeable kit and ARCA Swiss large-format camera in Times Square, New York. Much waiting is required at every viewpoint until the environmental elements are just as he wishes, and he is able to photograph the essence of the scene that has enchanted him.
All twenty-seven images in the show are available in editions of twenty-five, in various finishes and dimensions to suit the different requirements of clients’ homes or workplaces. The larger-scale, glass-faced prints give the impression that your wall has developed a new window that looks down on an exotic vista. Hauser has ambitions to return to Paris, Shanghai and Dubai, as well as revisiting the natural grandeur of the Alps. His appetite for travel is increasing and there are new commissions and collections on the horizon, both for his cityscape skylines and the mountains that first inspired him.
COVER subscribers are invited to the ‘Sky.Lines’ private view evening at 6pm on 10th June 2014. Please book early in order to avoid disappointment, as there are limited places and restricted access to the Gallery@LR. Please contact rsvp@chauser.eu.
