articlestextNEU="Perception and the staging of landscapes are the central aspects 
of Siegen, Germany-based artist Marc Baruth. Baruth clarifies modern man's gaze at 
natural sceneries which, in the proximity of large cities, appear to have been 
reduced to mere backdrops for the Fitness Generation's sporting activities. In 
Baruth's photographies, these stage-like natural vistas meet the requirements of 
the images' jogging, walking and cycling protagonists by presenting themselves as 
ideal - regardless of their actual condition. Located at a point of transition 
between painting and photography, Baruth's pictures give quick observers the 
impression of looking at painted nature tableaus; however, Baruth does not conceal 
the seams that hold together his works' constituent parts. He constructs collages 
without blurring the borders, thereby contradicting the modes of depiction of 
illusionist landscape portrayals.

In his series The Prodigal Son (2005), which also includes Evening, Sunset, and 
The Avenue, Baruth deals with the landscape paintings of Rubens - who, like 
Baruth, was born in Siegen. The collages of Westphalian and Flemish landscapes - 
homages to the baroque painter - not only broach the subject of present-day 
perception and use of natural landscapes; they also point out that man's 
recreations of nature have never been mere effigies, but have always involved 
projection."

(Prof. Dr. Matthias Winzen, in: UBS Art at Work - Luxemburg, UBS AG, Zurich, 2007)



Focus on: Marc Baruth - "Modern Rubens"

"It was my intention to return to the town its great lost artist figure", says 
Marc Baruth. Baruth, a photographic artists aged 31, is talking about the Baroque 
painter Peter Paul Rubens, who was born in Baruth's home town of Siegen (located 
in the Westphalia region of Germany) in 1577. "Unfortunately, the baby Rubens 
spent just a couple of months here before absconding - first to Cologne, and 
finally to Belgium."

For that reason, Baruth always sensed a slight "desperation" in the way that 
Siegen nevertheless continuously tags itself as the "Rubens City"; he admits that 
with his diploma thesis in his major subject Photography, "The Prodigal Son", 
gently satirizing that attitude was also a small part of what he intended to 
express. 

At first glance, it all seems decidedly unambiguous: Baruth's pictures are, in 
fact, instances of painted fine art. Their composition and line management can 
actually be observed elsewhere: "I have created surreal landscapes by means of 
photographic collage that borrow from existing Rubens paintings", the photographer 
explains. Indeed: Rubens' "Pond in the Woods" is similar to Baruth's picture from 
the way a birch tree is positioned on the edge of a forest to the arrangement of 
the clouds - and yet, something is different, as Baruth has replaced Rubens' 
peasant women with their jars and cows by a jogger taking a deep draft from a 
plastic bottle. In "Homecoming After The Harvest", Baruth exchanged the carriages 
on the left-hand edge of Rubens' original for children with bikes, and the harvest 
workers for a young family. "That way, I transported those ancient, well-loved 
nuggets into the modern age", Baruth says. Apart from that, he insists on having 
remained true to every detail: "I combined countless photographs from the 
Siegerland and Flemish Brabant, which was where Rubens painted. Not a single tree 
exists in these pictures the way we would normally see it, having been pieced 
together from four or five different elements." In a similar manner, rock ledges 
have been composed from images of loam, stones, or grass.

As Marc Baruth is primarily an artist, he has little interest in documentary 
photography. "My actual work begins at the computer; I've always been fascinated 
by manipulation of all kinds", he says. "Even in the Old Masters' paintings, you 
can find elements that constitute a breach of reality." In his work, Baruth 
expands on that realisation, transfers seemingly well-known themes into the 
present, and plays with the beholders' expectations. While from afar, "The 
Watering Place" may look similar to Rubens' eponymous painting, it becomes clear 
upon approaching that something is not quite right - nature, which humans once 
used mostly agriculturally, has been invaded by modern-day gentlefolk of leisure. 

"To me, today's relationship between man and nature is almost completely devoid of 
meaning", states Baruth, who was nonetheless unable to deny himself the 
preservation of one of Rubens' sheep in his picture. The photographer would like 
contemplators to closely approach his works, to look for structures and 
irritations - as one would in the case of a painting. 

When photography was invented in the 19th Century, it was assumed that painting 
would soon become obsolete. Both art forms continue to exist side by side, 
however, and Marc Baruth has dared to blur the boundaries between the two. (...)

(Stefanie Adamczyk, Frankfurter Rundschau Magazin, Nov 18. 2006)



(...) The people in these landscapes are clearly contemporary individuals - they 
wear weatherproof outdoor clothing, carry backpacks filled with necessary 
supplies, get refreshment from bottled mineral water, or perambulate their 
surroundings supported by "nordic walking" sticks. The landscapes themselves, 
however, are peculiar - well-regulated parks have been blended with wildly 
romantic, natural scenery.

These images' dully argentine skies appear to commemorate both landscape paintings 
of centuries past, and the fruitful Hobbit Shire from the classic fantasy tale 
"The Lord of the Rings". It seems as if the modern wayfarers in the photographs 
have lost their way.

Young photographic artist Marc Baruth - a crafty engineer of pixelled pictures - 
turns modern contemporaries into tiny genre figures lost in timelessly arcadian 
naturescapes based on scenery that can be found in Flemish Brabant (Belgium) and 
his native Siegerland (Germany). At the same time, Baruth - a graduate of the 
Dortmund University of Applied Sciences - newly interprets a topic as ancient as 
art itself: the tension that exists between man and nature. Baruth is one of nine 
young and highly promising German photographers whose work is now on public 
display at the House of Photography at Hamburg's Deichtorhallen. (...)

( ,Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, Feb 2, 2007)



(...) Positioning the maze of virtuality in front of an art-historical backdrop is 
a topic also chosen by Marc Baruth, whose art deals with the venerable heritage of 
Rubensian landscape painting. Employing titles such as "The Pond in the Woods" or 
"Coming Home From the Harvest", Baruth assembles sunny vedutas which, upon closer 
inspection, make their beholders' skins crawl. In the pictures, a bunch of modern 
leisurepersons hike, jog, cycle, and camp in completely synthetic, computer-
generated idylls: a panopticon of rootlessness. (...)

(Andreas Langen, Stuttgarter Zeitung, March 2007)