Jurgen Ostarhild

Jurgen Ostarhild (born in 1956 in Überlingen) is a German artist and photographer currently living in Berlin.
==Life==
Jurgen Ostarhild began his photography career as an assistant to Oliviero Toscani and Richard Ballarian in Paris in the late 1970s. In the summer of 1979 he went to New York, where he worked as a studio assistant to Albert Watson for a year. After returning to Germany and a brief engagement at the magazine auto motor und sport, he founded his own studio in Stuttgart in 1982. In 1986 he spent time in Los Angeles, where he bought a Cadillac in which he lived. 
In 1987, Ostarhild portrayed the artist Martin Kippenberger at the Hotel Chelsea in Colognehttps://artflash.de/jurgen-ostarhild-martin-kippenberger. He has been working for fashion magazines such as i-D, Sky Magazine, Paper Magazine, Jalouse and Sunday Times, but also shot campaigns for international brands such as Adidas, Levi's, Uvex, Sephora, Givenchy and L'Oreal. Style-defining portraits of models like Kate Mosshttps://supermodelshrine.tumblr.com/post/23054351813/kate-by-jurgen-ostarhild-1991 https://www.elle.de/lifestyle-ausstellungstipp-kate-moss-the-icon-218460.html and musicians like Moby and Jamiroquai emerged from this decade.
Ostarhild was developing action fashion photography from early on: a shoot on the Glacier de la Grande Motte in Tigne, where he photographed men's fashion by Jean-Paul Gaultier on snowboards for the Parisian magazine Citzen-K helped create this genre.
His first solo art exhibition was in 2002. Titled Überbabes, it showed transgender digitally composed pre-avatars at the Jerome de Noirmont Gallery in Paris. In addition, Ostarhild developed the first project for the online sale of digital artworks for this gallery.
Since 2010, Ostarhild has been working on a series of code images showing the hexadecimal code of his digital photographs. In 2019, Eugen Gomringer curated an exhibition of Jurgen Ostarhild at the Institute for Constructive Art and Concrete Poetry in Rehauhttps://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/sz-serie-ganz-persoenlich-folge-5-die-quadratur-der-poesie-1.4564263: Works in letters corresponding to the hexadecimal Color photography code were included.
Ostarhild is the inventor of the so-called “machine portraits,” an autonomous and flattering portraiture apparatushttps://www.instagram.com/machineportraits/. With this method, he removed himself as a photographer: any artistic intervention in the production of the image was made superfluous. This project implied a further alienation of the artist from the production of the image. Algorithms enable camera triggering, correct exposure, worldwide instant publication and archiving of the images produced.
Since 2020, Ostarhild has been engaged in the work cycle “ColorHueState," which was presented in Berlin in 2021 at Sexauer Showroomhttps://www.sexauer.eu/imagemachine/, in 2022 at KINDL – Center for Contemporary Art (“Ether as Honey”) and in 2023 at the Valletta Contemporary gallery in Maltahttps://www.vallettacontemporary.com/24-46-50-97. For Jurgen Ostarhild, photography has always been a technical image production. In his latest works, photography is enhanced by digital processes and blockchain technology. Automated, continuously running algorithms are used to create colored images from the data produced by the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains. Color is created by interpreting the characters of a blockchain hash as a hexadecimal color value. Similar to color field painting, the color detaches itself from the objective context and becomes the subject itself. Visual representations of the blockchains are created, which themselves become a part of the non-narrative art production process.
"For decades, Jurgen Ostarhild has been interested in what the photographic is, in what
organises and governs everything pictorial of the present like a photographic diapositive, like a foil, like an underlying element." Thomas Locher, artist and rector of the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts.
==Exhibitions==
* 2002: Überbabes, Galerie Jerome de Noirmonthttps://www.noirmontartproduction.com"
* 2008 Car crash, Berlin
* 2010 Shopping addicts, Paris
* 2013 Sommerloch II, Kwadrat, Berlin
* 2014 Sothebys, Milano
* 2014 Kate Moss - The Icon, Galerie Hiltawskyhttps://www.hiltawsky.com/kate/info.php
* 2015 Seconds Machine (Color Mode I), KW institut of contemporary art, Berlin
* 2016 Kunstverein Rosa Luxemburg Platz, Berlin
* 2016 Ausstellung, Metzingen
* 2017 Barbabette, Berlin
* 2018 You are just a piece of action, Miettinen Collectionhttps://miettinen-collection.de/2018/07/10/you-are-just-a-piece-of-action-portraits-from-the-miettinen-collection-2/
* 2019 Phänomene der Sprach-Kunst in Wortbildern aus Lettern und als Code: Jürgen Forster, Franz Mon, Jürgen Ostarhild, Kunsthaus Rehau, Institut für konstruktive Kunst und konkrete Poesie
* 2021 Group show Under the Undergroundhttps://www.whiteconcepts-gallery.com/andre-wagner-galerie-franzkowiak/
* 2021 ImageMachine, Sexauer Gallery Berlinhttps://www.sexauer.eu/imagemachine/
* 2022 Performance *Ether as Honey*, KINDL – Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst
* 2022 Group show Public Image Unlimited, GLUE Berlin
* 2023 Group show , Valletta Contemporary
==Publications==
* La beauté. Collectif sous la direction de Jean de Loisy (Auteur) Flammarion 2000
Category:1956 births
Category:People from Überlingen
Category:German people
Category:Artists
Category:Photographers