Serge Fruehauf Extra Normal

Architectural absurdities, surprises, accidents and crimes.

For two decades, Swiss photographer Serge Fruehauf has documented fascinating architectural details cast in concrete. But his focus lies not only in the beauty of the built environment but also in the surprising and sometimes absurd puzzles created by later interventionsstairways that lead to dead ends, disfigured garden walls that have long outlived their purpose. With Serge FruehaufExtra Normal, Joerg Bader has brought together the best and most interesting of the more than one thousand images in Fruehauf's most recent series.

Taken throughout Paris, Geneva, Grenoble, and Lyon, Fruehauf's photographs form a critical reflection on architectural modernity mitigated by the photographer's love of the spaces he has photographed and his deep sympathy for the architects and planners that have been drawn to concrete as a beneficial, multifaceted building material in the latter part of the twentieth century. Despite its promise, the buildings or clusters of buildings that have come out of the modern methods of construction with concrete appear today as bland monstrosities or grotesque hybrids of traditional and modern architecture. Fruehauf's photographs are joined by a preface by scholar and curator Martino Stierli, which offers an insightful discussion of how Fruehauf's work highlights these structures as allegories of the current cultural situation.

«Was und Serge Fruehauf in sorgfältig gebauten Farbaufnahmen bietet, ist ein regelrechtes Inventar, schon fast eine Enzyklopädie des Schreckens. Obendrein bringt er in geschickt gewählten Ausschnitten zusammen, was nicht eigentlich zusammen gedacht war, schon gar nicht geplant und doch in der Wahrnehmung zusammentrifft. So gesehen ist das perfide kleine Buch auch eine Schule des Sehens und der Erkenntnis. Der Gang nach Draussen wird nach der Lektüre ein entschieden anderer sein.» Hans-Michael Koetzle, Photo International

« Extra Normal ist mit seinem scharfen und humorvollen Blick auf alltägliche bauliche Verfehlungen sehr unterhaltsam.» Elina Potratz, der architekt, Bund deutscher Architekten BDA

Zusammenfassung

Architectural absurdities, surprises, accidents and crimes.