Torsten Schumann

More Cars, Clothes and Cabbages

09.09. – 13.10.2017

A ship is sinking but only as a bouncy castle, coal is piled in a shopping trolley and a young man with yellow pipes appears to be investigating the path in a park. Torsten Schumann's series 'More Cars, Clothes and Cabbages' leads the viewer into a world full of absurd situations and objects. The photos shown in the Soiz gallery are sometimes funny, sometimes tragicomic and always ambiguous.

Schumann asks himself, 'What is the hidden story and what motivates us as humans to change and create things?' The message behind his work could be not to accept the obvious but to understand the world as a great enigma.

'More Cars, Clothes and Cabbages' came into being during forays in European towns, unnamed by Schumann, between 2009 and 2016. Ultimately, they are interchangeable every-day places which appear exciting through the eye of the photographer.

Torsten Schumann's art is found in the fact that he convincingly shows the supposedly ugly as aesthetic: nothing in these photographs is superflous, the frame agreeably placed, the colours harmonious. Rubbish bins, shopping trolleys and plastic parts, even the people in the pictures appear as if they have been arranged. However, Schumann photographs only that which he has found – and leaves the interpretation to us.

The book 'More Cars, Clothes and Cabbages' was published by Peperoni Books in 2016 (ISBN 978-3-941825-97-0). The dummy was voted onto the shortlist at the Unseen Amsterdam 2016 and the Fotobookfestival Kassel in 2017.