"Homeseekers – A City from Behind, Detail 06"

C-print on Dibond

signed, titled, dated and numbered (ink) on verso

As in many of the artist's other works, spatial structures, special architectural situations and urban motifs are the starting point and theme. The basis for Homeseeker's project is to be found in the photographic capture of London's façade and wall views. Blanz has taken over 2600 photographs in all the boroughs of Greater London, reworked them and then, in some cases, put them together like collages and staged them anew.
Hubert Blanz is interested in the reduced form. He omits details and objectifies his photos. What is striking is that no people and as little of their surroundings as possible are depicted. In this way he achieves his deliberately "scene-like, naive and perspectiveless" view.
In his two-dimensional and abstract depiction of the window- and doorless house facades, he consciously refers to the children's drawing game "This is Santa's house", in which a simple house is drawn simultaneously to the eight spoken syllables within a line.
Blanz is a collector of motifs. In addition to a brief documentary character, his work contains the intention to evoke and allow new contexts of meaning.
The series Homeseekers - A City from Behind is a 9 meter wide city view, which was created between 2012 and 2016. Each photo or image contains multi-layered possibilities of perception and wants to be read as such. An important aspect of Hubert Blanz's work is the socio-critical questions and historical connections: Especially the "backyard view" is more interesting than the magnificent view of a building. Houses are consciously viewed from behind ("The City from Behind") - with their window, door and unadorned facades. The artist emphasizes his fascination for the architectural peculiarity of these simple brick façade houses, which increasingly replaced wooden buildings after the Great Fire of London in 1666.
The window tax of 1696 and the "tax on air and light" of 1746, both of which were not abolished until the middle of the 19th century, were also decisive for their appearance; during their long period of effectiveness, social differences became clearly visible.
During his research in London, Blanz noticed the many real estate offers of estate agents. By the title Homeseekers, which is part of the name of a London real estate agency, he refers to their advertisements - an illustration of the hopeless search for accommodation in a precarious housing market situation, as is increasingly felt in Vienna.
(Simone Christl, 2016)