Jürgen Beck

At the center of the exhibition “Then leave the ornamentation of it to nature” by the Zurich based artist Jürgen Beck is the question of how photography translates architecture into images. Taking the iconic architecture of the Bauhaus Dessau as its point of departure, the photographs on view were made during Beck’s residency as Artist in Residence at the Bauhaus Foundation in 2025. They situate the Bauhaus ensemble within a range of perspectives and spatial relations, positioning it within its urban and cultural context. Beck’s images create a sense of intimacy and a palpable sense of presence. Architecture appears not as an autonomous object or a self-contained artifact, but as a social and physically experienced space.

At the same time, the photographs engage with the iconic images of everyday life at the Bauhaus in the 1920s, which have fundamentally shaped our visual understanding of the institution and have become deeply inscribed in the collective image archive of modernism. Residential and workshop buildings, furniture, and everyday objects are not read as isolated forms or design icons, but as relational elements within a complex cultural text that remains present today. In this sense, Jürgen Beck’s photographic practice can be understood as a visual investigation of architecture in use—as a living, mutable structure into which social practice, perception, and time continually inscribe themselves anew.