Jessica Backhaus embarks on her work with an obvious relish in experimentation. The photo artist draws inspiration from the simplicity of everyday things, from unassuming scenes and silence. The artist's new trilogy brings together three series of approximately 40 works each. The first series, Beyond Blue, is devoted completely to colorful threads, staged against colored backgrounds. The viewer feels compelled to linger in this radical reduction, trying to unravel the entanglement of the seemingly unspectacular with the resulting aura of contemplation. In Shifting Clouds , Backhaus considers and documents this very transition - a reality that lies in between things. The second series shows fragments and visions that are poised on the verge of becoming, caught in limbo: reflections, haptically appealing surfaces, shapes imaginatively metamorphosing, upbeat tones, intensely colored sensations. In the third series, New Horizon, the artist presents free-flowing and persuasive poetic impressions. The compositions captivate with their variety and puzzle-like elements. Backhaus is breaking new ground in photography, incorporating components of mixed media, painting, and collage that expand and deepen these abstractions.
Jessica Backhaust was born in Cuxhaven, Germany in 1970 and grew up in an artistic family. At the age of sixteen, she moved to Paris, where she later studied photography and visual communications. Here she met Gisele Freund in 1992, who became her mentor. In 1995 her passion for photography drew her to New York, where she assisted photographers, pursued her own projects and lived until 2009. Jessica Backhaus is regarded as one of the most distinguished voices in contemporary photography in Germany today. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin. To date, eight publications to her name; Jesus and the Cherries, 2005, What Still Remains, 2008, One Day in November, 2008, I Wanted to See the World, 2010, ONE DAY- 10 photographers, 2010, Once, still and forever, 2012 and Six degrees of freedom, 2015 and A TRILOGY, 2017, all published by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, Berlin. Her photographs are in many prominent art collections including Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Germany, ING Art Collection, Belgium, Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA and the Margulies Collection, Miami, USA. Jessica Backhaus is represented by Robert Morat Galerie in Berlin, Galerie Anja Knoess in Cologne, Petra Becker/ International Art Bridge in Frankfurt, Robert Klein Gallery in Boston, Bridgette Mayer Gallery in Philadelphia, MiCamera Gallery in Milan, Carlos Carvalho ARTE CONTEMPORÂNEA in Lisbon and Wouter van Leeuwen Gallery in Amsterdam. Critic and writer Jean Dykstra is editor of Photograph magazine, New York. Rémi Coignet is a photography journalist, critic and publisher based in Paris. Matthias Harder is Chief Curator at The Helmut Newton Foundation, Berlin.
