Strangers

After ten years in America, the Berlin painter Peter Bradtke exhibited in his home city for the first time again. In the huge self-portraits painted in New York, the artist has staged himself. Now as a film hero, now as a private detective, he prowls through night-time streets, stairwells and hotel rooms. Painted in a photorealist manner, Bradtke steps into the role of his protagonists from the films of the 1940s. Despite the cold, neon-coloured atmosphere, the artist gives the impression of an urban romantic rather than an urban neurotic; the perspective of his pictures resembles tracking shots through urban canyons and captured scenes, each of which illuminates the action in fragments. Bradtke stands coolly and detached in his pictures opposite the extremely cold, stylised-looking half-naked women. The viewer becomes a voyeur.

Conceived as a total work of art, the pictures were underscored by a musical installation of songs from cult films and compositions by Gershwin. The artist himself designed the rooms as salons or painted them in the colours of his urban backdrops.

A catalogue was published to accompany the exhibition.
Transport and printing costs were largely financed by sponsors.