Published on the occasion of Klapheck’s 1993 exhibtion at Galerie Lelong, Zurich. Includes the essay by Konrad Klapheck Die Supermutter.

Klapheck, who was just 10 when World War II ended, saw in the destroyed cities and ruined buildings all around him a certain beauty or spectacle. After becoming a student at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, Klapheck turned to a different kind of subject matter, creating the first of his many “machine pictures”: the 1955 painting Typewriter. He went on to expand his repertoire to include sewing machines, faucets, telephones, irons, and even a hay-turning machine.

Over the past four decades, Barbara Bloom (American, born 1951) has engaged in a nonceptual practice centered on photography and intricate image-based installations featuring diverse elements such as sculptures, found objects, and film stills.

Bloom rarely presents a singular image or object, but concerns herself with the relationships between objects and images, and the meanings implicit in their placement and combination. Bloom’s artwork uses beauty as a premise for investigating illusion, fragility, and transience.