Heinrich Georg GmbH is a globally active mechanical engineering company headquartered in Kreuztal in the northern Siegerland region of Germany. Its main products are conveyor systems, machine tools and transformer systems as well as service and other services. With its transformer systems division, Georg is the leading manufacturer of transformer core cutting and stacking systems. The company currently employs more than 400 people in Kreuztal and is known for its good working atmosphere. The fine art photographer Thomas Kellner has taken two photographs for Georg that are part of the Genius Loci series.

But what was the theme of Genius Loci?

At the beginning of 2012, the artist received a surprising email from Ekaterinburg in the Russian Urals to create a project with an exhibition and book for the city's anniversary in 2013, as Ekaterinburg was founded over 300 years ago by Georg Wilhelm Henning, a citizen of Siegen. This was hardly known and so he began his research and published his findings in a photo book entitled Genius loci and an exhibition that toured the world.

In this project, Thomas Kellner took an artistic and photographic approach to two important economic areas in Germany and Russia that share a common history of industrial culture. We are talking about his home town of Siegen and two of the largest cities in the Russian Urals, Ekaterinburg and Perm.

So what does Thomas Kellner do? He playfully captures the rhythm of the man-made world, full of erected church buildings and factories, and serves the viewer not the monuments in detail, but the rhythm of the entire landscape. Music and architecture, the architecture is like a finishing point, the artistic starting point for a new artistic journey for the viewer - that is Kellner. Just like his compatriot and predecessor in the Urals, Georg Wilhelm Henning, the Siegen photo artist Thomas Kellner reconstructs the familiar environment so that it always remains in motion, both today and in the future, and constantly provides new perspectives. This is how Julia Kneppe describes it in her essay, in which she compares the photographs of Thomas Kellner with the music of John Cage.

Two pictures represent the Heinrich Georg Maschinenfabrik in Kreuztal

The collaboration between Heinrich Georg Maschinenfabrik and Thomas Kellner has resulted in two pictures that reflect Kellner's Cubist and Deconstructivist techniques on the one hand and the facets of the Heinrich Georg Maschinenfabrik company building on the other. One of the two pictures hangs in the central entrance area of the company headquarters in Georg Haus.

The first picture was taken shortly after the completion of the new Georg House, just in time to be included in the book and exhibition. At that time, the building was ready for occupancy, but the areas around the building were still a construction site and fallow land for the planned park around the building. As early as 2012, the image was edited so that a green, blooming landscape grew around the company headquarters.

The second picture was taken later, after the gardens around the building had been completed, with a slightly different viewpoint. In this picture, typical of the Genius Loci series, only the building itself can be seen to be moving in facets, but the area in front of the building and the trees, unmoving, are more capable of overcoming the grid of the analog contact sheet.

 

Heinrich Georg GmbH Maschinenfabrik
Langenauer Straße 12
DE 57223 Kreuztal
Germany
+49 2732 7790
georg@georg.com
https://www.georg.com/en/

Introducing Heinrich Georg GmbH Maschinenfabrik
Art at Heinrich Georg GmbH Maschinenfabrik
Art by Thomas Kellner at Heinrich Georg GmbH Maschinenfabrik
Interview with Marc Georg