calendario eventi  :: 

X

14/12/2011

Laurent Segretier / Vincent Szarek

The Essential Collection, Zurich

Laurent Segretier

French photographer based in Hong Kong, Laurent Segretier belongs to the new media generation whose work is developed through meticulous manipulation of high technologies. Keen on exploiting the binaries in life, his works touch on the tactility of human encounter through the representation by digital apparatus. Segretier would distort his own photos by manipulating the pixels of the images on the computer screen to render them unstable, where he would repeatedly reshoot the screen image with different shutter speeds until they deform into a fragmented, pixilated texture.

Hence, the outcome on the screen becomes the input for the artists photographic composition. Despite the use of digital devices, the resulting images paradoxically preserve a touch of craftsmanship. Each image reshot is a reproduction - yet a singularity - for no image is identical with one another given the vacillating quality of the pixels. This concept also cast an alternative light on the idea of reproduction not as a replica of the same subject, but a repetition characterized by non-neutrality.

Using pixilated strokes as his medium, Segretier paints images that explore theme of identity, religion and sex. The orgasmic images of his fiancée who experiences jouissance, the little death, which also symbolizes the intimate dialogue between the lovers materialized in texturized pixels - all these images represent the artists constant exploration of the nuances between reality and fantasy in a world where perception is a sensory overload of images while reality no longer has its relevance, and how private life and personal fantasies have turned into a form of exhibitionism that invites the voyeuristic gaze of the viewers.

----

Vincent Szarek

Vincent Szarek's sleek, four-piece exhibition offers a poetic meditation on modern decadence. The first item, on the floor, is a long, narrow, geometric solid painted in glossy, metal-flake gold. It looks like a parody of Minimalist sculpture, but it is also readily identifiable as a pimped-out, Finish Fetish-style parking-lot tire block. So it alludes to a certain vein of ostentatious, macho car culture.

Suspended nearby in midair is a pair of shiny, black, softball-size cherries attached to gold-plated steel stems. Realized with Koonsian perfection, the cherries call to mind tattoos and slot-machine symbols, which also may be associated with quasi-rebellious subcultures. The third sculpture is more puzzling. It is a glossy, black, cast-urethane representation of a classical column broken off like a tree stump. A gallery news release points out that high-rolling drug dealers favor classical pastiche for their mansions. There's a wonderful term for this genre: "narcotecture."

Finally there is "This Is the Meaning of Life," a big sign on the wall whose block letters are made of sequins loosely hung on nails. A fan causes them to wobble so that the words shimmer to optically dazzling effect. The text quotes from a Tom T. Hall song: "Faster horses, younger women, older whiskey, more money." What men really want, in other words.

This seems a pretty easy target for Mr. Szarek. The typical, liberally enlightened gallerygoer might ask: What has this to do with me? On the other hand, don't we all have our own primitive objects of desire?

Text: Ken Johnson, New York Times

Image: Laurent Segretier: no title, 2011

Opening: 15 December 2011 - 18:30

The Essential Collection
8045 Zurich - Giesshübelstrasse 62c
Admission: free

stampa

permanent link