Philipp von Rosen, Cologne

The Philipp von Rosen gallery have a strong interest in video art and therefore work with and co-produce artists such as Corinna Schnitt, Javier Téllez, Rebecca Ann Tess, or Judi Werthein.
With Alpha++ Rebecca Ann Tess presents architecture as a representation of wealth, power, and influence.

For The Tallest she took photographs of the world‘s tallest buildings. This material has been consolidated to a filmic experience of the buildings and their characteristical smooth surfaces. Shots along the facades show the buildings detached from their bases and their surroundings. The hyperrealistic impression of the architecture is intensified by a narrative spoken by a computer-generated voice. Described superlatives demonstrate the indefatigable global competition about the title‚ The Tallest.

The 7 photographs of the series “Template Selection” strengthen the impression of buildings as detached, inhuman, objectified beings that rather work as signs of dominance in an urban context than as inhabitable architectures.

Port Grimaud I II III shows 75 houses designed by François Spoerry as an exclusive residential estate in France. Port Grimaud is a postmodern, planned city. Each house of the estate has been planned along the traditional Mediterranean building type following an individual ground plan, constructed in concrete. However, the individuality is in fact a planned “individuality”.

Upper shows the towers of San Gimignano a.k.a. “medieval Manhattan”. They did not serve as fortifications of the city, but had rather been erected by the merchants as a sign of prosperity and power. The towers are shown in segments, rigorously formal and from below. Minimal movements of birds, clouds, or persons let the images shift between photograph and moving image. Upper‘s soundscape detaches the towers from their historic and urban context. Seemingly original urban sounds mix with the chirping of crickets.