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Rinaldo Hopf: AMORE

7. November 2004 – 14. February 2005

Hopf has turned the chamber of the Schwules Museum into a wonder cabinet filled to the brim with photos. For nine years now, since the first meeting, he has taken photos of his friend Frank alias Fox. They show a gifted model and multi-faceted personality while the artist’s own perspective becomes obvious through his gaze. Which is something else! This is a subversive declaration of love playing with all cliches of masculinity, to destructure them with a touch of irony. The result is a gay hero who likes to play with his cazzo and his cat.

Thomas Sokolowski about Rinaldo Hopf: Subversiv? (Part taken from the Photo Catalogue Subversiv):

For the many years that I have known Rinaldo’s work, he has continuously endeavored to catalogue, define, chronicle, those members of the queer community whose impact on our world has been so great whether they be the members The White Rose secret society, or even barely camouflaged self-portraits of the Golden Hans series. “We were there,” he tells both us and them because both we of the community and those outside, do not know, will not remember, must be told. This current series of photo portraits is riddled with characters who have chosen to perform, and then again, those who must. To many viewers, they might be subversive, but to many others, they will seem familiar. In a sense, Rinaldo must have been thinking of his kinsman, August Sander’s formidable series, the German Man of the Twentieth Century. Each in his own way tells the story of a people and of a time. Berlin is not the same place it was. Yet each of Rinaldo Hopf’s sitters inhabits that city today, makes it come alive, and makes it real. Perhaps, even more real than Sanders.

Curator: Rinaldo Hopf