Ulrich Gebert

We are pleased to present our fourth solo exhibition with the German conceptual photographer Ulrich Gebert at Klemm's Gallery Berlin. In his works, Gebert addresses the culturally shaped relationship of man to nature and his environment. His installations, as well as the photographs arranged in series and wall tableaus, are not to be conceived as a romantic motif of reunion between man and nature – rather, they testify to a critical and humorous examination.

In his most recent group of works Eigenface, Ulrich Gebert explores a fairly new visual phenomenon that can certainly be viewed critically: what used to be reserved for the privilege of intelligence service practice is increasingly determining our private as well as public, digital as well as analog space due to the ubiquitous spread of digital devices – facial recognition. The significance of the photographically fixed face is no longer aimed at a representative, formally closed portrait practice: it is only in their linkage with other images and information that they acquire their cognitive value.

In our digitalized world, the billions of faces circulating on social media have become a valuable resource, siphoned off and exploited by state and commercial actors alike. But facial recognition algorithms are errorprone and by no means "neutral": they exacerbate racist discrimination and reinforce gender stereotypes.

The exhibition is textually contributed by Dr. Roland Mayer, art and media scholar at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, who in his latest publication Facial Recognition asks about the consequences of the controversial technology – and about the possibilities of subversively evading it.