After the success of the exhibition in which he recently played a leading role at the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome, Hubertus von Hohenlohe chooses the historic venue of Galleria d'Arte Maggiore g.a.m. in Bologna as an ideal further opportunity to present "Pop the City," an exhibition project that gathers a carefully curated selection of iconic photographs with which von Hohenlohe explores the world of portraiture and urban landscapes. The style that the photographer has developed over the last two decades during his travels in the world's largest cities is characterized by the inevitable inclusion of his self-portrait impressed on the reflective surface of a shop window, which, through an overlap of layers, blends with the glimpses of urban reality and the physicality of the public space in which the photographer finds himself at the moment of the shot. A blend of reality and fiction, a juxtaposition of public and private, it becomes a very precise snapshot of our contemporary society and presciently anticipated the rise of selfies and the proliferation of social media.
Born in Mexico City in 1959, Hubertus von Hohenlohe is an eclectic and multifaceted artist with a fluid creativity that transcends the boundaries between photography, fashion, and music. He is also known for an extraordinary sporting career as an Olympic skier and race car driver.
Accustomed to travelling from one capital to another, Hubertus von Hohenlohe is a true citizen of the world, with a strong attachment to many places and at the same time to none, capable of adapting to the new scenario he encounters each time. Travelling around cities with his camera since 2000, when he received his first digital camera as a gift, he captures snapshots of himself, strangers, and famous personalities, as well as metropolitan scenes, immortalizing the world he lives in without filters or deceit, showing an extraordinary ability to establish immediate contact with the people he photographs and the places he visits. As a result, his images are full of vibrant intensity, sometimes ambivalent and contradictory, as in the case of urban landscapes, where the static austerity of the architecture contrasts with the speed and haste with which the viewers pass through those spaces. In these images, time seems to be suspended, devoid of linearity but rich in layers, where the artist is constantly alert, always waiting for the next silhouette to photograph, like some photographers of the 20th century, especially Vivian Maier and Lee Friedlander, who were in some way precursors of street self-portraits and staging favored by Von Hohenlohe: his self-portrait impressed in the reflective surfaces of shop windows. By presenting himself in the dual role of a model and photographer, the artist overturns the usual dynamics of self-portraiture and blurs the boundary between posing and acting, thus explicating one of the paradigms of contemporary visual culture, that of looking and being looked at. The absence of reference models allows him expressive freedom in which he condenses the experience of the solitary traveller who carries the mark of the places he has traversed, proposing a highly personal compositional scheme in which subject and reality, scenario, and person are blended together. His goal is to merge his own image with that of the models without, however, diminishing their protagonism. All within the postmodern Western city, where the public dimension has now been replaced by privatized space, in a reality that promotes individualism and in which opportunities and places for spontaneous gatherings are lacking.
Hubertus von Hohenlohe's works have been exhibited in many European museums, such as:
Westlicht Photo Museum, Wien, IT'S ME, 2004
Danubiana Museum, Bratislava, ENTER MY UNIVERSE, 2006
Museo Piaggio, Pisa, ENTER MY UNIVERSE, 2006
National Museum, Budapest, BUDAPOPEST, 2011
Belvedere Museum, Wien, THE PERFECT TOURIST, 2012
Leica Museum, Wetzlar, ELEGANTLY WASTED, 2015
Fundacion Unicaja, Malaga, 15 MINUTOS DE FAMA, 2022
Fundación Cajasol, Seville, FAMA EVERYBODY!, 2023
Chiostro del Bramante, Rome, POP THE CITY, 2023
