At the beginning of spring, Thomas Rentmeister photographed the surfaces of piles of snow that had not yet completely melted away and used them as a motif. The image sections were then paradoxically transformed by a digital filter into a structure that resembles analog television snow (white noise). The unevenness and dirt particles of the piles of snow on the photo originals now permeate the predominantly monochrome microstructure of the image surface as ghostly shadow-like interferences.
Thomas Rentmeister’s photographs of yesterday’s snow give rise to the well-known expression “That’s yesterday’s snow”, which stands for past things or events that have become obsolete, uninteresting or even boring for a certain reason - usually due to progress over time. Beyond the mere fact that something no longer corresponds to the current state of affairs, “yesterday’s snow” therefore has a pejorative connotation that goes hand in hand with the suggestion of anachronism.
Thomas Rentmeister, born in 1964 in Reken/Westphalia, works in the fields of sculpture and installation. He lives and works in Berlin and Dreetz/Brandenburg. He has held a professorship for sculpture at the Braunschweig University of Art since 2009. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, Hamburger Bahnhof, Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and Sprengel Museum Hannover. Many of his works are also represented in important public and private collections.