Barbara Probst. Poesia e verità

From March 23 to May 22, 2022, Triennale Milano will be presenting Barbara Probst. Poesia e verità, the first solo exhibition held in an Italian cultural institution by this German artist who has displayed her works in several leading international museums, including the New York MoMA, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the London Tate and Le Bal in Paris. Many of her works are now part of major museum collections.
The exhibition – the title of which draws upon Goethe’s autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit – offers an itinerary through images executed at different moments in the artist’s career. This selection of 24 works, featuring a total of 91 images, includes portraits, still lifes, nudes, street photography, fashion and journalistic photographs, genres that Probst explores by alternating the use of black & white and colour.
Stefano Boeri, President of Triennale Milano, has stated: “In recent years, we have assigned renewed centrality to photography in the Triennale Milano programme, by presenting the works of young talents as well as established artists. The solo exhibition we are devoting to Barbara Probst represents a unique opportunity to make the Italian public more familiar with the work of an outstanding and internationally acclaimed artist. It falls within a programme designed to analyse photography as a means to enact a critical process and vision.”
Barbara Probst’s works always comprise a group of mysteriously connected photographs. The associated images portray the same subject, at the same instant: through the use of a radio-controlled device, the artist has different cameras simultaneously capture the subject from different angles and distances. The same instant is fragmented and expanded, multiplying the points of view and raising questions about the photographer’s role and that of the viewer. This brings out all the ambiguities of photography, the medium of partiality par excellence.
The selection of works on display illustrates the versatility of Barbara Probst’s work, which focuses on the theme of vision and the individual, subjective perception of reality. Also on display are the two photo shoots she did for Vogue Italia in 2017 and 2019, and her 2018 one for Wallpaper.
All proceeds from the Barbara Probst. Poesia e verità exhibition will be donated to the Milano Aiuta fund, promoted by the City of Milan in collaboration with Fondazione di Comunità Milano, for the reception and support of Ukrainian refugees.
The Institutional Partners ENI and Lavazza, and the Technical Partner ATM are extending their support of Triennale Milano to this exhibition. Born in Munich in 1964, Barbara Probst studied sculpture at the Munich Art Academy and photography at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in Germany. Her work was displayed at the New York MoMA in 2006 as part of the exhibition ‘New Photography’ and in numerous solo exhibitions, including those held in the following venues: Le Bal, Paris; Centre Pasquart, Bienne; Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Bignan; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen; Stills Gallery, Edinburgh; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; Oldenburger Kunstverein; Rudolfinum, Prague. Her work is featured in the collections of several museums, such as the Folkwang Museum in Essen; the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich; the MoMA and Whitney Museum in New York; the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa; the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; and the San Francisco MoMA. The publishing houses Steidl, Hatje Cantz, Hartmann Books and Éditions Xavier Barral have all published monographs on her work.

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