Under the watchful eye of the bust of Ernst Curtius the researcher transfers manual notes into the digital model (© Jonas Zilius)
reflector on telescopic rod and light tripod with ball joint head (© Jonas Zilius)
The sandy grounds of the stadium heats up particularly when the sky is clear and cloudy (© Jonas Zilius)
architrave with triglyphs and geison on two Doric capitals and stone block (© Jonas Zilius)
In the series Olympia Jonas Zilius succeeds in photographically revealing the complexity of a tiny contemporary detail: with eyes trained by Bruno Latour, he observes archaeologists during the remeasurement of the south hall in the ancient Olympia complex. In a stylistically differentiated visual language, he shows the actors and their technical instruments; the Mediterranean landscape and the tourist spectacle; the ancient artifacts and the digital forms of visualization that are also used today for archaeological work. The assembly of the different levels of reality leads to new forms of reportage photography. One that steps up to the complexity of the present.
Jonas Zilius (*1984) lives and works as an artist and photographer in Karlsruhe. He studied architecture at the Institute of Technology and acquired his diploma in summer 2014. In parallel, he studied media art with a focus on art photography with Armin Linke and Michael Clegg at the HfG Karlsruhe and concluded his diploma with distinction in 2017. His projects move in the interplay between photography and architecture and are based mostly on thoroughly researched content. Under the seemingly documentary character of his works lies a stark artistic examination of the material, which also converts complex topics into a visually structured narrative form.