Stunned Man (Trilogy of Failure II)2004
Julian Rosefeldt born in 1965 in Munich, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Julian Rosefeldt studied Architecture in Munich and Barcelona. He holds an MA in Architecture since 1994. In 2009 and 2010 Rosefeldt held a guest professorship at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Faculty of Media Art. Since 2010 he is a member of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Department of Film and Media Art, Munich and since 2011 he has a Professorship for Digital and Time-based Media at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich.

The artist has made a name for himself with lavishly produced 16mm and 35mm films. Projected onto several screens to create a panorama-like effect, his films carry the viewer off into a surreal, theatrical world whose inhabitants are caught in the structures and rituals of everyday life. In what are probably his best known film installations, Trilogie des Scheiterns (Trilogy of Failure, 2004–2005), Rosefeldt dealt with universal themes like the absurdity of human existence, approaching them with slapstick humour and plumbing their deeper
philosophical meaning. His most recent film installation American Night takes on decidedly more political issues: Using the stylistic devices of the Western genre, he deconstructs the myth of the founding of America and relates it to the hegemonic ambitions of recent US foreign policy. Like his earlier works, this latest work is rife with biting satirical humour.

Almost all his works are characterised by their complex interweaving of several dimensions of reality, a device he uses to expose the production process. In American Night and The Soundmaker (Trilogy of Failure, Part 1, 2004), for example, he has the camera zoom out so far in an extreme long shot that the film set comes into view. Thus, his films are also always a homage to the medium of film and a reflection on the construction of fictional narratives using cinematographic and iconographic means.


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