PODGORNY ROBINSON GALLERY

Tom Fecht jumpstarted his artistic career in 1992 at Jan Hoet’s  documenta IX. In the late 1990s he turned to photography as his preferred medium. Since then, he has created an extensive body of landscape and portrait work. In recent years, Fecht has become known for his innovative night photography and seascapes, focusing on natural phenomena hidden in time and often invisible to the naked eye. 

The large-scale, minimalist works of his extensive night cycle Dark Matters includes series like Eclipse and Gravity Fields often hovering between the physical world and the unseen aspects of the universe, magically transforming natural phenomena in the depths of time. The series Incertitudes, Cosmic Vertigo and his most recent micrographs Studies of Ancient Light apply advanced microscopic imaging, pushing his photographic experiments towards the edge of quantum physics. Current color work explores marine bioluminescence captured Entre Loup et Chien at dawn, recently shown at Galerie Rudolf Zwirner in Berlin. 

Inspired by the Apollo missions and Kubrick’s cult film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Fecht studied physics, thermodynamics and cybernetics at Columbia University NYC. He went on to study engineering and art history at the Technical University of Berlin. As a young engineer, Fecht was involved in the development of fax machines and computer-aided image processing at IBM and Control Data. In the early 1970s, Fecht was among the first wave of artists to move into the rough industrial lofts of lower Manhattan. He soon engaged with the vibrant Land Art scene, including Walter de Maria, Mike Heizer, and especially Robert Smithson and followed up on these connections during documenta 5 (1972) and 6 (1976). After a $5 job for Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s adventurous Valley Curtain in Colorado in 1972, wordsmith Gene Solon encouraged him to mobilise his scientific background and to explore Land Art on his own terms. His early installations  For Gravity’s Sake (1971) or Spacetime Mirrors – The Lorentz Transformations, an intervention at the ‘infinite corridor’ of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT in Cambridge MA (1972), has been regarded as an artistic challenge to chaotic systems and an early attempt to transfer Smithson’s concept of site and non-site into the scientific realm.

Back in Berlin, he founded his own gallery and the Elefanten Press publishing house. Over the next two decades, Fecht worked as a gallery owner, exhibition designer, journalist, publisher, author, and editor, with a constant preoccupation with artistic, documentary, and historical photography becoming an integral part of his professional routine. When he finally gave up publishing to devote himself entirely to his artistic career, his early exploration of Land Art resurfaced two decades later with his memorial Mémoire nomade at documenta IX in 1992. This memorial of Names and Stones in partnership with the German Aids Foundation successively expanded into over 40 permanent and temporary installations. Transforming into a European network of local memorials over the next decade, his geographically expansive epitaph anchored itself in contemporary urban mourning culture. Still active and expanding by annual additions of Name-Stones to public and museum installations over the past 30 years, his memorial is regarded today as the European equivalent to the American Quilt Memorial. Fecht refers to this transformative decade 1992 – 2002 as his artistic Street-Academy’, dealing with death in a multi-layered work.

In 1999, Fecht moved from Berlin to Paris-Montparnasse and began an intense period of experimental studio work in which he was finally able to ‘spit out’ all those images that had occupied his imagination over many years and accumulated in numerous sketchbooks. These included primarily body and movement studies, often in collaboration with choreographers, professional dancers and models from the Paris opera, ballet and music scenes. He soon expanded his portfolio to land- and seascapes and refined his large-format photography; often supplemented by portrait commissions also including the New York Times. A working residency in London finally expanded his artistic practice into high-tech and scientific imaging; Fecht has since developed his own photographic and technical patents and has taught at Cornell University NY, the Royal College of Art and Imperial College in London, occasionally also lecturing at ETH Zurich. 

Today he designs his own image machines continuously exploring the intersecting layers of three very different chaotic systems: waves, weather and cosmic radiation captured in an alchemical mix of unpredictable phenomena. The waves of the open Atlantic, the permanent weather transformation above and the seasonal and cosmic effects of planetary rotation merge into a systematic artistic approach, gradually drawing the eye towards phenomena much larger and older than us. When it comes down to the thin red line that marries most of Fecht’s recent work, the prime suspect is veiled in its very own magic: gravity.

Since 2012-2013, Tom Fecht’s works have been unique pieces, regularly presented at TEFAF in Maastricht and New York and featured in museum exhibitions and permanent collections. Among them are the Neue National Galerie and the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Royal College of Art London, Museum DKM Duisburg, Museum Folkwang Essen, MuCEM Marseille, Musée des Beaux-Arts LAAC Dunkerque, Musée des Beaux-Arts Liège and the photographic collection of the New York Public Library. Fecht’s works are represented in numerous corporate and private collections in Europe, North America, Brazil and Asia. In Switzerland, his work has been presented several times at Art Basel and Design Miami/Basel, also including the Helmhaus and his permanent installation EPITAPH III – Names and Stones at the Fraumünster in Zurich; under the apse with its stained-glass windows by Marc Chagall.

Tom Fecht was born in the land of Hesse, Germany and lives and works in Berlin and Geneva, his work is centred around his studio on the Atlantic coast in Brittany, France.