Photographer and video artist, Pablo Zuleta Zahr, was born in Vina del Mar, Chile in 1978. Recently, Zuleta Zahr was a master student at the Düsseldorf Academy under famous German photographer Thomas Ruff who also studied at the Academy alongside Bernd and Hilla Becher. Lambert Krahe as a school to teach drawing techniques founded the Academy in 1762. However, in the 1850’s the Academy became internationally known with students coming from all over the world; places such as Scandinavia, Russia, and the United States. Some of those students were Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter. Currently, Zuleta Zahr works and lives in Berlin and is said to have his workspace in a subway under neutral lighting working on his most recent collections that involve public spaces and the people that inhabit these spaces.
Zuleta Zahr has been a part of several group exhibitions and a good amount of solo exhibitions as well. In 2003 Zuleta Zahr had a solo show at Galerie der Stadt Remschied. Following three more solo exhibits in the next five years; one being a show at Gallery September in Berlin titled “Butterfly Jackpot” which was a video installation. This solo show was a very first of the Gallery September and opened on December 7, 2007 and showed through January 12, 2008. Some group shows Zuleta Zahr has participated in include one in 2005 at the Galleria Sozzani in Milano and another in 2006 at the Studio La Citta in Verona, Italy.
Zuleta Zahr’s collections deal heavily with people in their every day environments and Zuleta Zahr just happens to capture them on his video shooting or in his photography. A collection of his that is very interesting is one that he has been completing in an underground setting; underground by the subway in Berlin. Zuleta Zahr sets up a video camera that faces a monochromatic wall and each video session lasts 10 hours. From each of these 10-hour video sessions Zuleta Zahr captures tons of people going back and forth and he then uses those people in his projections that he composes after making deliberate selections from the videos. For instance, he says that in all of his videos, no one is forgotten (all of the people that cross the camera are somehow used), no one is manipulated, and no one appears twice. Also he bases his final flat work or “scores” on rhythm, forms, and colors and sees them as the “meeting of appearance and being.” Also, his work has been characterized as snapshots from the viewer’s initial impression and then as the eye works around the work the viewer let’s it see the compositions in depth and see the minute details that make up the complexity of Zuleta Zahr process work. In an excerpt from him he explains that his work addresses fashion, mass-produced goods, trends, and stereotypes.
When looking at these collections I very much saw the fashion and trendy side to these pieces but at the same time I felt very connected to the aesthetic and compositional choices that Zuleta Zahr made in order for his display of the work to be a success. Because lately I have been milling over how I will present my most recent body of work, I enjoyed looking at the choices he made because they are very similar to how I think I am going to present mine once completed. His use of color and movement throughout each piece seems so striking to the eye and really helps lead the viewer from the beginning to the end of the photograph.
Studio La Citta Website
Artist Website & Contact
Dusseldorf Academy Website
Wiki Page on Thomas Ruff
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