On Wednesday, October 28, 2020, as part of his sale dedicated to the Daniel Varenne's collection, the PIASA auction house will honour Dieter Appelt by offering for sale a selection of six photographs made in the late 1970s.
After a first training in Leipzig, Dieter Appelt studied at the Berlin School of Fine Arts where he began photography with Heinz Hajek-Halke. Quickly, his work is characterized by the multiplicity of mediums.
At the end of the 1970s, strongly influenced by the work of Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) or the Viennese actionists, he practiced photography, film, sculpture and drawing at the same time. His images that he gives birth are deeply tormented.
Dieter Appelt (born 1935)
Beschichtung, 1979-88
Estimate: 2000 / 3000 €
They express the anguish and distress of the human. At the limit of self-portraiture, his pictures are very close to body art, as evidenced by "Aus Errinerungsspur (head)", a photograph taken in 1978. Dieter Appelt often stages his own body in performances. He thus becomes both the subject and the object of his works.
For him, photography is an allegory of the passage between life and death and sees not only a way to fix one's own mortality but also to capture the passage of time. Time and light are indissociable in most of his early work as "Ezra Pound, Bild n°5" presented with an estimate of between 1,000 and 2,000 euros.
Dieter Appelt (born 1935)
Ezra Pound, Bild n°5, 1981 - 1983
Estimate : 1000 / 2000 €
Beyond the obvious themes of self-discovery by the specular image, of Narcisse, the double, the self-portrait with the mirror of Dieter Appelt that the house PIASA offers for sale stages the mechanism of the perception and nature optical photography.
The interposition of bodies between the photographic lens taking the place of the seer and the image produced reminds us that essence is not the same as representation. Between reality and imitation, visual value and tactile value, Dieter Appelt's images are staggering, situated in an in-between of space and time, born of a profound reflection on being in the world.
Dieter Appelt (born 1935)
Fom Moorbegehung, 1977
Estimate : 1000 / 2000 €
