The work of Matthias Gabi is characterised by a detailed consideration of the photographic image, reflecting on the conditions of image production, dissemination and knowledge transfer. This takes in the beginnings of photographic reproduction, the heyday of the photobook and the illustrated magazine, and the present day, when the printed object – deliberately or unintentionally – is always defined as an antithesis to the digital. The artist’s book Shot on iPhone, 2009–2017, which has been published on the occasion of Gabi’s solo exhibition at Kunsthaus Langenthal, consists of an as yet unseen series of hundreds of note-like iPhone photos of advertising in the public realm. Derived from Apple’s advertising campaign of the same name, the uniformity of the consumer-oriented language of advertising images is striking in this collection. Contrary to the otherwise sought-after general validity of the picture, Gabi emphasizes in this series the rambling, collecting, juxtaposing, random gaze.
