"Passage"

pigment-based inkjet print on Kapa

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

Oliver Boberg has devoted himself to the reality of the photographic image – both behind and in front of the camera. Actually, the reality that appears in his photographs is also of his own creation and composition. In each case, the result is a perfectly modeled and photographed illusion. The viewers are entrusted with this illusion, and left with their never-wavering faith in photography and its self-evident reproduction of reality. Through the years, Oliver Boberg has consistently held on to this image-model constellation. The artist, however, is not concerned about how far he can carry the illusion in his pictures with technical means, but about the effect this has on the viewer. The effect, to be sure, goes far beyond debunking the photographic image as an illusion, as fake reality – because a multitude of realities are actually at work in Oliver Boberg’s pictures.
The question whether a model or reality appear in the photographic images of Boberg undoubtedly plays a major role. However, the insight that the works are photographic images of models does not lead to a conclusive judgment. This is what the American art historian Elizabeth Mangini writes about the photographic works of Oliver Boberg; “The interest does not stop when we discover that they are models. Actually, the real game even starts then. “(Elizabeth Mangini, Fictional Spaces of Photography, in Eikon Special Issue # 4, p. 22) In the strict sense, “the game” begins with the fact that the photographic image wants to make us believe, that we see an image of a given realty. ... Thus, the viewer’s sure gaze relies on the supposed specificity of photographic representation in order to be questioned in the same breath. By showing models of reality and not reality itself, photographic images irritate not only the assumption of a superficial evidence of what is visible, but even more the model-like requirements of photographic production and reception. These images of models remind us that photography itself is always just the model case of a possible reality, meaning. And can establish intuition.
(R. Christofori, Galerie Lothar Albrecht, 2019)