Product Description:This catalogue features the work of German photographer Angelika Rinnhofer. It showcases her images from three related series, Menschenkunde, Felsenfest, and Seelensucht. She describes her series Menschenkunde as portraits that combine facts, beauty, and irony in a Renaissance-style. Rinnhofer’s series, Felsenfest, continues the same aesthetics in its re-interpretations of martyrs and saints into a modern context. Rinnhofer remembers being frightened as a child when viewing the horrific images of tortured saints commonly found in churches in her hometown Nuremberg, Germany. She now casts a critical eye, juxtaposing religious figures with modern-looking scientists. Seelensucht takes Rinnhofer back to the traditional single-figure portrait, also capturing the themes of martyrs. This catalogue features an introduction essay by Hannah Frieser.
About the Artist: Angelika Rinnhofer was exposed to art early in her life. Her mother’s artistic talent as well as the artistic tradition in her family served as inspiration for her interest in painting. At a young age Rinnhofer was introduced to the work of painter Albrecht Dürer, who lived in her hometown of Nuremberg, Germany in the sixteenth century. Dürer’s work still inspires Rinnhofer today. While in art school at Fachoberschule für Gestaltung, her interest in art shifted from painting to photography. According to Rinnhofer, many things have influenced her current photographic work, including Renaissance paintings, Gothic and Baroque churches in Europe, history, people’s faces, jewelry designed by a friend, seeing Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine, beautiful fabrics, and reading the New York Review of Books.
Rinnhofer was trained as a commercial photographer in Germany, in art school and through a professional apprenticeship with Bischof & Broehl. Once in the United States she continued to work in commercial photography for about four years, then decided to focus on her career as an artist. She now limits the number of commercial assignments she accepts, and spends the majority of her time teaching at The Harvey School in Katonah, NY and working on her art photography.
Rinnhofer is the recipient of a Kodak European Gold Award, funding from the New York State Foundation for the Arts, and a fellowship in photography from the Dutchess County Arts Council. Her work has been exhibited internationally, most recently at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles and Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in Miami. Her photographs are included in collections at Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz, NY, at Light Work, and the private collection of Joseph T. Baio, Esq. She participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence program in 2005. Her website can be found at www.angelikarinnhofer.com.
