Thomas Albdorf

Former Writer: Colour on Surface
Pigment prints, unmounted, mounted or framed, varying sizes, 2013

In 2012 my photographic practice mainly consisted of wandering through urban peripheries, seeking and finding littered and abandoned objects, and staging them to record the scenery via a photograph. On these ramblings I often came across paintings which took me back to my first contact with art production in my early teenage years: graffiti-writing. The desire arose in me to use spray-paint again – a wish to use painterly intervention to apply a contextual shift to objects and scenarios.

“Former Writer: Colour on Surface” integrates graffiti-related methods into my photographic and sculptural work. I investigate the relationship between pre-photographic painterly and sculptural interventions and their post-photographic digital equivalents, as well as the connection between spontaneous arrangements in public spaces and compositions staged in the studio that echo the works created outside.