VIDEO ART
Boberg, Oliver
Germany (1965 - )
Landstrasse / Country Road
2002
Single-channel video (color, sound); Duration: 34 minutes
Gift of William and Ruth True
FA 2014.297

At first glance, Oliver Boberg’s video Landstrasse/Country Road looks like a scene from a film of a rural landscape amidst a downpour of rain. What appears as a non-descript, everyday site is actually an elaborately constructed model. The artist creates his works by collecting items that describe a certain type of area and arranges them to create miniature scenes. Shooting from predetermined vantage points in his studio and using such cinematic conventions and strategies as atmospheric lighting and soundtracks, Boberg makes the miniature model sprayed with water appear real. In doing so, he raises important questions about truth in photography and video, while at the same time creating open-ended narratives.

Oliver Boberg was born in 1965 in Herten, Germany. He currently lives and works in Fürth, Germany. He first studied painting at the Art Academy in Nürnberg and then went on to study history and art at the University of Würzburg. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. -- Guidebook copy for The Ghost of Architecture, July 13 to September 29, 2013.