DUSSELDORF.- Photography begins to lose its familiar boundaries in METAMORPHOSE, a new exhibition by Austrian-born, Berlin-based artist Josef Fischnaller that opened at noir blanche Galerie für Fotografie in Düsseldorf on September 18.

On view through October 31, 2026, the exhibition introduces a striking new direction in the work of an artist best known for elaborate photographic restagings of Renaissance and Baroque paintings. For years, Fischnaller has constructed richly detailed portraits and still lifes whose theatrical lighting, sumptuous arrangements and carefully positioned figures draw directly on the visual language of old master painting.

In METAMORPHOSE, many of those familiar subjects remain, but almost everything else has changed.

Figures, flowers, fruit and elaborate arrangements are transformed into fluid fields of intense color. Sharp outlines give way to dissolving edges, while recognizable forms hover somewhere between representation and abstraction. The works can look less like photographs than paintings caught in the process of coming into existence.

That transformation is central to the exhibition.

Fischnaller, born in Grieskirchen, Austria, in 1964, has long occupied an unusual territory between photography and painting. His earlier compositions often played with the viewer's knowledge of art history, using the precision of photography to recreate—and frequently gently undermine—the grandeur of historical portraiture and still-life traditions.

The new series pushes that relationship much further. Instead of using photography to imitate the clarity and structure of classical painting, Fischnaller allows the photographic image itself to become unstable.

Colors become more saturated and energetic. Forms appear to flow into one another. Details that might ordinarily help the viewer identify a face, object or setting are allowed to blur or disappear entirely.





The result is a body of work that seems deliberately at odds with contemporary photography's relentless pursuit of greater resolution.

At a moment when even an ordinary mobile phone can produce extraordinarily sharp photographs in a fraction of a second—and immediately enhance them through automated software—Fischnaller moves in the opposite direction. Rather than emphasizing technical perfection as an end in itself, he uses the medium as a starting point for something less certain and more unpredictable.

The works in METAMORPHOSE are shaped by processes of change. Material, time, color and the photographic image interact until the original subject becomes something new.

What initially appears accidental is also carefully observed. Areas that seem uncontrolled, blurred or incomplete become the very elements that hold the compositions together. Fischnaller captures a particular point in that transformation, freezing an image that still seems capable of continuing to change after it has been photographed.

That tension gives the exhibition much of its visual energy.

The images resist the conventional expectation that a photograph should explain what is in front of the camera. Instead, they invite viewers to remain with ambiguity. Borders fade, contours soften and recognizable motifs emerge only to disappear again.

Even the titles offer little assistance in decoding what is being seen.

That lack of direction appears intentional. Rather than telling viewers how to interpret the works, Fischnaller allows color, scale and movement to take over. The eye travels through sweeping passages of pigment-like color and partially recognizable forms, creating an experience that can feel closer to entering a dream than examining a photograph.

Some of the works are monumental, making their visual instability even more pronounced. Seen at large scale, the images become immersive environments in which the distinction between subject and background is increasingly difficult to maintain.

The exhibition also marks an important development in Fischnaller's ongoing dialogue with the history of painting.

Where his earlier photographs often quoted Renaissance and Baroque compositions directly, METAMORPHOSE engages painting in a more fundamental way. The connection is no longer primarily about borrowing poses, costumes or compositions. Instead, it appears in the physical sensation of the images themselves—the flow of color, the disappearance of contours and the impression that the surface is continually being remade.

For an artist whose photographs have often looked uncannily like paintings, the new series brings the two mediums closer than ever.

Josef Fischnaller: METAMORPHOSE is on view at noir blanche Galerie für Fotografie, Hermannstr. 31, Düsseldorf, through October 31, 2026.