For Florian Westermann photography is an ongoing process of self-discovery, learning, and following a deep desire to go out and explore the world. Photography is much more than producing a lasting memory for him. It gives him the opportunity to give artistic expression to the portrayal of nature and habitat characterized by his view. The landscape is the perfect source of inspiration, always renewing and inexhaustible, an epic framework that provides unprecedentedly new opportunities every day.
Florian Westermann (b. 1980), grew up in West Berlin and witnessed firsthand the fall of the wall. Reunification and the city as a rapidly changing melting pot influenced his childhood and youth. Already in this context, he developed a very strong interest in photography. The city offered him an inexhaustible wealth of inspiration and motives. However, he soon discovered his special predilection for nature photos. After leaving school, he started his career as a business journalist in 1999. On numerous journeys, he also had the opportunity to devote himself to landscape photography and to discover new, fascinating places over and over again.
Over many years, he managed to teach himself the knowledge that he needed as a photographer. Passion was just as key to his success as his willingness to spare neither expense nor effort in search of the best moments of nature. He realized almost nothing brings people together in the way photography does. For Florian Westermann, it is a universal form of expression that appeals to people very directly in a rational and an emotional way.
With the exhibition “Magical Places” at ‘art place berlin’, he exhibits works of recent years to a wider audience in Berlin for the first time. Forty-five high-quality large-formats show impressive motifs from the cities of New York and San Francisco, the vastness of the American Southwest, the paradise islands of the Seychelles, and motifs from Europe such as the German and Swiss Alps or the Mediterranean island of Sicily.
“Photography is a fire that burns inside my heart and will not let me go. In pristine nature, I find something that is larger and more important than ourselves” – Florian Westermann. Since 2014, he lives and works in Munich.
http://www.art-place-berlin.com/english/03exhibition/2014-magic-places.html
http://www.facebook.com/pages/art-place-berlin/127864197289132
‘art place berlin’ is the forum for contemporary art and intercultural projects at the Park Inn by Radisson Berlin-Alexanderplatz. It offers the opportunity to encounter current international art to over 30,000 monthly guests and visitors. The changing exhibitions show artistic positions in painting, photography, and works on paper. The exhibitions can be visited daily from 9 am – 9 pm with free admission on the ground floor and the 1st floor.
Today, ‘art place berlin’ looks back on 5 years of successful collaboration with artists, curators, and institutions. From the beginning, it could be trusted in the rich experience of organizing more than 100 high-profile exhibitions, which were shown in the former Art Center Berlin Friedrichstrasse from 2005 to 2010.
All information: http://www.art-place-berlin.com
art place berlin – forum for contemporary art
in the Park Inn by Radisson Berlin Alexanderplatz since 2009
Alexanderplatz 7 / Park Inn, 10178 Berlin, Germany
Contact: Thomas Tyllack