Standard
Texts: Nadine Wietlisbach, Franziska Solte, Benedict Wells
Design: Alexandra Bruns
Publisher: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2016
Exhibition Views
(...)The views from the hotels in Bangkok and Istanbul seem familiar—aren’t we all familiar with these aesthetics from photos on the web sites Tripadvisor and Booking.com? Two elements can be useful for geographical categorization: means of transport and flags. The artist often tried to capture the first: means of ground transport, such as buses, trains, and trams; of air travel, airplanes; and boats on the water, like in Dubai and Venice. Flags can be seen clearly in the images of views from rooms in Panama City, Hanoi, and São Paulo. The flags function as exclamation marks in an exchangeable visuality, emphatically clarifying the statement of the city one is in. Nonetheless, classification of these national symbols, these rectangular, two-dimensional arrangements of colors, surfaces, and signs might be a challenge for some. Our ideas of cities are shaped by advertising stereotypes characterized by dualities: megacities are poor and rich, beautiful and overwhelming. Although the views in the Standard series let us imagine details of different worlds, they resemble one another, refer to overlaps: urban landscapes with skyscrapers, magnificent buildings, streets, bodies of water, and flora.
In recent art history, the motif of the hotel room, that is, the view from it, has surfaced in all media: in paintings by Edward Hopper, in the video Untitled by Andrea Fraser, in which she indulges in a sexual encounter with a collector in a hotel room in 2004, and in photos by Diane Arbus (Mexican Dwarf in His Hotel Room in N.Y.C., 1970), Nan Goldin (Hotel Room, Zurich, 1988), or the Joyce II (2015) series by Juno Calypso. Appearing in 2002 was the publication containing the Vistas desde habitaciones de hotel – Views Out of Hotel Room Windows series by Hans Peter Feldmann, the obstinate ethnologist of everyday life. In this series, the view is central, as it is for Eberhard. Stylistically, the design is more open and the artist himself plays a key role. Feldmann is present as author; he stayed in all of the hotel rooms, they are stations on his personal journey.
In his search for reduction, for the exclusion of possible sources of irritation, Eberhard is influenced by well-known personalities, such as Karl Blossfeldt, August Sander, or Bernd and Hilla Becher, later representatives of New Objectivity. The collectivity of typical characteristics, enabled through the typology of an object, is paradoxically marked by omission. There are a total of 550 Hilton Hotels in seventy-nine countries on six continents. Standard is complete conceptually, if not in numbers. Every diptych and the series as a whole tell more about emotional states and human contexts than one would suspect on first impression. Through a restriction to twelve months’ time, and the selection of one hotel in each country Eberhard visited, the sober pictorial language emphasizes the madness of traveling with cheap airlines, multi-option offers, and time as a precious commodity.
Arriving, finding one’s bearings, putting luggage down next to the reception, saying one’s name, presenting some sort of identification; Making sure that it is the right room. The view from the window, the view of a landscape that reveals more than the impersonal, temporarily inhabited room. Every standard room around the world is furnished along the same scheme. The furnishings resemble one another: there is always a chair with a floor lamp, an alarm clock on the night table. For documenting the interiors, Eberhard selected the same, specific detail each time. The bed, which in the photos is slightly cut off, is to the right in the room. This formal selection alone betrays the photographer’s presence. (...)
Nadine Wietlisbach, 2016