Michael Schnabel. Neunkirchen (Germany), 1966. No living presence, only occasionally its traces appear in Schnabel's art, in which he seeks to capture an increasingly illusive sense of stillness, finding it in museums after their doors have been shut for the day, or in the cages of zoos, emptied of their usual inhabitants. Silent Mountains (2003) portrays the presence of these monolithic natural structures in the absence of light, in beautiful, yet simultaneously disquieting dark images which provide an antithesis to the bright white aesthetic which pervaded contemporary photography at the time of their creation.
Kerber, July 01, 2007