The Wild West is everywhere! The installation artist Christoph Dettmeier (*1966 in Cologne, lives in Berlin) seeks out and finds the endless expanse of the prairie in the Ruhr area, in Detroit, or in Berlin. In his works, desolate industrial wasteland takes on the role of the ghost towns. It constitutes the background for silhouettes of lonesome men on horseback or relief-like figures wearing cowboy hats.

Whether in photographs or collages, in sculptures or as the video background for his bizarre performance Die Stunde des Cowboys (The Hour of the Cowboy): Dettmeier stages non-places in such a way that they appear to be surreal, utterly timeless, and surprisingly painterly. Although the focus is always on their pictorial quality, these photographs are also a sociology of decay—atmospheric, perhaps melancholic, yet never sentimental.

The locations are interchangeable, regardless of whether it is a shrinking city like Detroit, a sprawling megalopolis like Istanbul, or a brownfield in Berlin. The images in the view-er’s mind charge the vast landscapes with emotion, and ultimately, only a few additional props are required—such as the spurred boots, the Johnny Cash songs, whiskey, or ciga-rettes Dettmeier uses in his “Country Karaoke Shows”—and the myth of the heroic Wild West celebrates its merry revival!

Download floor plan (german)