Splitting Wagner

John Hill

27. de maig 2015

Photo: Hagen Stier

In commemoration of the Vienna Ringstrasse's 150th anniversary, Parabol Art Magazine has published a special edition with photos of Otto Wagner's Postal Savings Bank taken by Hagen Stier and a companion exhibition in the building.

The Postparkasse, completed in 1912 and now a museum, is considered Wagner's masterpiece and an important work of early modern European architecture. Curator Oliver Elser and architectural photographer Stier pay tribute to "this paragon of Viennese Modernism" in the magazine and exhibition; the former is printed in a large format – opening up to measure almost A1 in size – while the latter consists of Stier's photos in vitrines inside the building's main hall.

Curator Elser says this about Stier's "split" photos of Wagner's architecture:

Hagen Stier has developed a method to disassemble a symmetrical building firstly into parts and afterwards to re-assemble them so that it results in a new configuration. By combining shot and reserve shot and juxtaposing situations that are actually far removed but reflect one another, he recomposes the world-famous – and thousand-fold photographed – Postsparkasse by Otto Wagner. The photographs expose the building’s structure like a surgeon uncovering bones with his scalpel. Photographs are constructions of reality. In Hagen Stier’s splittings, the image construction of the follows the building construction so closely that spatial images are generated that are as rational as they are surreal.