The first exhibition of the main programme has been open since 7 March. MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art presents works by the German visual artist Annette Kelm, drawn from two series: Die Bücher and Travertinsäulen Recyclingpark Neckartal. In the project Die Bücher (“The Books”), the artist presents book covers – of first or early editions – which were banned by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. Presented frontally against a neutral white background, they seem to evoke the format of portraiture. In the series Travertinsäulen Recyclingpark Neckartal, Kelm photographed a row of monumental travertine columns on the outskirts of Stuttgart, which were originally intended to form part of an unrealised monument to Benito Mussolini in Berlin, but now stand hidden in the vicinity of a waste processing plant.

Annette Kelm – was born in 1975 in Stuttgart, Germany. She lives and works in Berlin. Annette Kelm studied at Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg. She received numerous awards and prizes, among them Camera Austria Prize (2015); Preis der Nationalgalerie, Audience Award (2009); and Art Cologne Prize for Young Artists (2005). Annette Kelm’s photographic oeuvre offers a unique outlook onto the socio-cultural history of the material world. The artist uses a vast array of motifs as vocabulary to address specific moments in this history, whether it is the commodification of design objects, various forms of political critique or value systems such as money and finance. Kelm’s exhibitions gather images of floral sculptures, landscapes, portraiture, photographed buildings, and ephemeral objects of all scales. Meticulously picked, the artist’s subjects enter in collision and contrasts where the objective converges with the subjective, the every-day encounters the historical, and the impartial becomes political. Her practice draws from conventional studio photography techniques: employing a large-format camera and depicting her subjects in front of a backdrop. The arrangements that the artist sets up at her studio are often playful, retain an experimental character or are seemingly captured glimpses of time. Kelm’s distinctive approach to the photographic medium has made her a prominent figure of contemporary photography in Germany and worldwide.