There couldn’t be a better exhibition venue than the Reinbeckhallen for Gregory Halpern’s photographic land surveys. As Berlin’s Oberschöneweide feels like an industrial wasteland, so are Halpern’s motifs influenced by the melancholy of the periphery. For “ZZYZX“, an exploration of Los Angeles, the artist starts in the desert of Bernardino County. ZZYZX is not a fictional placeholder for this place of longing, but the real name of a village in the Mojave Desert, where Halpern’s journey begins. The impressions he collects along the way are as dreamlike and surreal as the name suggests – charred palm trees sprouting anew, a man with pink hair and a hand that no longer needs to reach for the stars because it’s already tattooed with them. Halpern also drifts through the American backcountry for the “Omaha Sketchbook” series. These photographs show the boys of Nebraska on football fields, in prison cells and front yards. By depicting vulnerability as well as stereotypical ideas of masculinity, Halpern succeeds not only in portraying a lost generation, but in showing the USA in a state of transformation. (Text: Laura Storfner / Photos: Gregory Halpern (above and right) & Loock Gallery, 2020)
Loock Galerie, Reinbeckhallen, Reinbeckstr.17, 12459 Berlin–Oberschöneweide; map
Gregory Halpern: Omaha Sktechbook | ZZYZX until 01.11.2020
Wed–Sat 11–18h
@gregoryhalpern
@loockgalerie
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