Matthias’s contribution to ARNO is deeply inspired by his passion for the Japanese ikebana tradition – its minimalism and emphasis on shape, line and form. Ikebana aims at creating a moment in which natural elements can be appreciated that are otherwise often overlooked, bringing nature and humanity together. Through the medium of photography, Matthias develops his very own interpretation of ikebana’s concept of heaven, earth and man, which slightly differs from the intentions of the Japanese tradition.

Achieving an utterly unique, mystic and poetic result, his ‘zen-like’ visual contemplations on the human condition combine the close-up shots of car lights – produced sometime around the early-2000s – in Treasure V and Treasure, with the shimmering water- surface of the river Spree in Berlin that formerly divided the Friedrichshain district of East-Berlin from the Kreuzberg district of West-Berlin in Shiver. It reminds us of a time so close and yet so far away.

Leipzig-born Matthias Krause trained as a photographer before he received an MA in Fine Art from Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel, Germany.
Matthias divides his time between Berlin, Germany, and Istanbul, Turkey, where his practice roams fields such as performance, fashion, film, advertising, music, lecture and tourism. Within these fields, his work focuses on the isolation of the banal but nevertheless meaning-producing structures, highlighting their particular attributes. For Matthias, these serve as models to contemplate on – a kind of ‘bonsai’ of the everyday life.

Matthias questions how certain appearances become loaded when a visually captured moment gains autonomy from its original context or when a simplification of the familiar accumulates enough qualities to serve as a model for contemplation.
He exhibited in the UK, France, Austria, Turkey, Russia and New Zealand, as well as in numerous group and solo shows in Germany, including Ikebana Figur IV at Kunsthalle Kiel. Matthias work is also held in private collections in Europe and Oceania, and he directs the Black Door Istanbul Project, together with artist Mark Henley from New Zealand.