Fotogaga. Max Ernst und die Fotografie

Published June 16, 2025

Fotogaga is an exhibition concerned with photographic and photography-inspired works by Max Ernst (1891–1976). It was recently shown at Berlin’s Museum für Fotografie. From the press release:

Max Ernst holds a prominent position within Dada and Surrealist Art. His name stands for genre-bending works that combine dream and reality. The exhibition […] is the first to search for points of intersection between his work and photography. Commemorating Surrealism’s centenary, the Museum für Fotografie (Museum of Photography) is showing a representative overview of Max Ernst’s artworks from the Würth Collection. These are complemented by works from the Kunstbibliothek, Kupferstichkabinett, Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and other exceptional loans from museums and private collections in France and Germany.

Both the exhibition graphics including posters, flyers, and scenography as well as the design of the accompanying catalog make prominent use of Cosplay. According to its designer, Philipp Herrmann of Swiss foundry Out of the Dark, the italic-only typeface “is based on two paradox design principles by combining organic shapes with a grid-based structure. [It’s] drawn from scratch with loose references to Lazybones […], Cooper Nouveau […] and typography spawned by rave culture”. A further cited source of inspiration are the works of Jean (Hans) Arp, Surrealist artist colleague and close friend of Ernst. The specimen pdf for Cosplay depicts Floral, a collage created by Arp in 1957, featuring fluid organic shapes.

The accompanying sans is Dinamo’s ABC Favorit.

The exhibition was curated by Katja Böhlau and Ludger Derenthal. The bilingual catalog (German and English) was published by Wienand Verlag and comes with essays by the curators as well as by Michael Lailach and Jürgen Pech.