The Aspen Series
Featured at venues and locations throughout Aspen Snowmass, a multi-site exhibition of internationally renowned artist, Walter Niedermayr, entitled The Aspen Series is displayed with large-scale photographs and banners. Paula and Jim Crown, partners of Aspen Skiing Company, commissioned The Aspen Series by artist Walter Niedermayr in 2009 as a demonstration of their passion for both art and the natural surroundings of the mountainous areas and towns in Aspen Snowmass.
Walter Niedermayr has worked in alpine regions around the world since the late 1980s, using his camera to explore the issues surrounding the presence and interference of people in sensitive landscapes. These are the first works produced in the U.S. by the internationally acclaimed artist. The Aspen Series depicts the winter landscape of the iconic ski resort in the Rocky Mountains, on which a highly ambitious kind of tourism has taken a heavy toll.
Aspen Skiing Company in conjunction with Jim and Paula Crown, released the book The Aspen Series by Walter Niedermayr in March 2013. This illustrative book vividly explores the commission and exhibition of Niedermayr's 42 photographic compositions, the video "Downhill" and a digital pattern, representing landscape scenes of specific locales across the four mountains that make up Aspen Snowmass. The Aspen Series continues the tradition of mind, body and spirit, and establishes Aspen Snowmass as a unique cultural and recreational destination. Combining nature and tourism in alpine landscapes from a new and exciting perspective, this innovative slopeside exhibition is another one of the many reasons to visit Aspen Snowmass.
The exhibition is spread across the resort including installations on Aspen Mountain, the City of Aspen, Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk and Snowmass. See below for specific locations and exhibit information.
Learn About The Summer Series
The Artist
Walter Niedermayr was born in Bolzano, Italy in 1952. Niedermayr began photographing the landscape in 1987 and is recognized worldwide for his large scale photographs presented as multi-panel works. His projects include Alpine Landscapes (1987), Rohbauten/Shell Constructions (1987), Raumfolgen Space con/Sequences (1991), Artefakte/Artifacts (1992), Bildraum/Space Images (2000). Published in 1992, the artist’s monograph entitled Die bleichen Berge/The Pale Mountains portrayed the alpine landscapes for the first time. In 2000, the artist also began to work with video. Learn more about the artist at www.walterniedermayr.com.
The Aspen Series
Aspen 34/2009: Aspen Mountain
“Through multiplicity, an instantaneous 8 photographic image breaks the concept of place and time. This literally amplifies the ‘horizons’ of our perception.”–Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Sundeck, Benedict Room Aspen Mountain
Aspen 20/2009: Sam’s Knob at Snowmass
“Man’s concept of real-world landscapes is perceived through media-based images. Man’s approach towards the real world has taken place largely by means of the image. Perception of landscape is primarily the perception of images.”
–Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Sundeck, Benedict Room Aspen Mountain
Aspen 11/2009: Aspen Mountain
"The works address social processes; in this way they show instable systems in open and closed space and make reference to social and political conditions."–Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Sundeck, Benedict Room Aspen Mountain
Aspen 86/2009: Panda Peak At Buttermilk
"Seeing and observing what we call “reality” is always embedded in perception patterns, but this is something we tend to overlook. Routine observation, for example, takes place in perception structures appropriate perhaps for an object, but not for living things, not for all that is complex, interrelated, possible. Seeing habits are often simply passed on without the viewer’s conscious realization. Which view do we take when we look? What are the seeing habits in which we dwell?" –Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Aspen Skiing Company Offices
Aspen 98/2009: Highland Bowl At Aspen Highlands
“The difference between staging and reality must be renegotiated over and over again. The more sophisticated the technology becomes, the more problematic the notion of reality.”–Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
The Little Nell Chair 9, Aspen
Aspen 51/2009: Aspen Highlands
“My work alternates between the appearance of so-called reality and the reality of the image; it aims to reveal medial representation as well as to foster and clarify perception.”–Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Limelight Hotel, Aspen
Aspen 105/2009: Aspen Mountain & Tiehack At Buttermilk
“For me to break up a single image is a staging of time and space. Images and imaginations of space are movable fragments and, in this sense, incomplete framings.” –Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Limelight Hotel, Aspen
Aspen 02/2009: Buttermilk
“Every representation is also a production of representation, and therefore a medial construction.” –Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Limelight Hotel, Aspen
Aspen 77/2009: Aspen Highlands
"The perception of this alpine space, in particular of the landscape and nature, continues to be committed to the conventional image: the antipodal relation between man and nature. Here unspoiled and veritable nature; there the already tainted antithesis, altered by approximation and use, vanished." — Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Merry-Go-Round, Aspen Highlands
Aspen 71/2009: Aspen Highlands
"The exploration of viewpoints is well suited to my serial working method because according to the observer’s perception the images are constantly shifting, relocating, and repeating themselves. In the end, each photograph is a fragment of a much more complex situation." — Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Aspen Highlands Escalator
Aspen 05/2009: Buttermilk
"I look for places where people are doing something in the landscape, where they are occupying and restructuring it. I find places that are largely devoid of people far less interesting. One might conclude that the only landscapes we have left are cultural landscapes, that natural landscapes in a so-called "pure" state have virtually ceased to exist because man has already been practically everywhere." — Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Cliffhouse, Buttermilk
Aspen 25/2009: Aspen Highlands
"The depiction of the landscape itself in the two photos is regarded by most people as a so-called natural landscape, which isn’t actually correct because it is in fact a cultural landscape that has been modified and constructed by humans to serve their purposes; one might also describe it as nature that has been custom formatted to meet the needs of the tourist industry." — Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Buttermilk Ticket Office, Buttermilk
Aspen 81/2009: Panda Peak At Buttermilk
"I imagine creating an image space in which the observer is able to define his own point of view. Ambiguity in respect to content, ambiguity in respect to form, and ambiguity regarding the possibility of a closer examination. There are several potential approaches such as social or landscape-specific processes or aesthetic questions in respect to landscape, spatial consciousness and environmental/ecological awareness as well as questions regarding perception – the reality of the image, spatial reality, the limits of representation, etc. The work is not obvious, though at first glance it might seem so." — Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Elk Camp, Snowmass
Aspen 30/2009: Buttermilk Superpipe
“Using the medium of photography, I try to dissent from realism in an attempt to show the openness and limitlessness that lies in front of and behind the image. The visible becomes visible within a horizon only if the not-visible recedes. White originates by mixing together all of the colors of the spectrum at the same level of energy, or by detracting colors from inks or pigments.” –Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Two Creeks Ticket Office, Snowmass
Aspen 32/2009: Fanny Hill On Snowmass
“From a spatial point of view, everything is perpetually changing; including people and fashions. Nothing changes as quickly as the world of tourism, with leisure and sport activities evolving. These forms of movement create new structures within the landscape and changes the circumstances of the present.” –Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Snowmass Gondola Ticket Office, Snowmass Base Village
Aspen 88/2009: Panda Peak At Buttermilk
“Spaces and places are produced through pictorial communication. They functionas the carriers and mirror images of social needs and desires. The perception of landscape or nature is still committed to the classical image: the relationship between human being and nature by contrast.” –Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Treehouse Kids’ Adventure Center, Snowmass Base Village
Aspen 110/2009: Aspen Mountain
"Reality is constructed through our senses, thus the so-called truth about our existence is only an apparent one. There is no right way of viewing, nor are there formally definitive solutions that can rise above all that are momentary." — Walter Niedermayr
Exhibit location:
Colorado Ski Country USA
1444 Wazee St., #320 Denver, CO 80202
