<sup>COMMENT

The transition of the human race from being nomadic tribes of hunters and gatherers towards being settled communities of peasants and stockbreeders is what is commonly understood as the beginning of human civilisation or sometimes even the beginning of history. Nevertheless, it seems that – even after settling – men never stopped hunting. Hunting today is highly charged in a mystical and religious way that we encounter when looking at cave drawings or legendary figures such as the fabulous Nimrod. It is this mystical aspect that is still imminent – despite the nowadays often very technological and rational approach towards hunting. According to the bible, Nimrod is a great grandson of Noah and is „something of a great, mighty huntsman“. He represents the archetypical human hunter and is therefore the eponym for Bastian Gehbauer’s exhibition that revolves around the archaic aspects of hunting.
The asymmetry between hunter and hunted, the rule of the human kind over nature, warm blood in cold snow, the question of life and death – it is all these archaic aspects that have fascinated men since the beginning. Many of these motives have registered in our minds over and over again through representation in art and mythology over different eras and cultural circles all over the world.
Bastian Gehbauer merges these ideas and aspects of hunting in an associative way: He cites art historical threads and trends, like in his precisely arranged hunting still lives that are reminiscent of the Dutch Masters still-life paintings of the 17th century. In contrast to these paintings stand the Gehbauer’s images from the forests and wilderness in which the artist’s camera seems to have taken the position of the rifle and the searching eye of the hunter. Gehbauer’s work is a fascinating study depicting one of the absolutely fundamental issues of the human kind. 

Andreas Wolf</sup>