© Rebecca Ann Hobbs, Pot Shot, 2005
© Rebecca Ann Hobbs, Crack, 2005
Category Archives: Performance
║ Christian Thompson ║
© Christian Thompson, Untitled #2, from the series Australian Graffiti, 2008
© Christian Thompson, Untitled #7, from the series Australian Graffiti, 2008
To see more of Christian’s work click here
║ Susanne Junker ║
© Susanne Junker, The Perfect Woman Is A Lie, from the series Woman, 2006
© Susanne Junker, The Perfect Woman Is No Lie #1, from the series Woman, 2006
© Susanne Junker, The Perfect Woman Is No Lie #3, from the series Woman, 2006
Photographiée par les plus importants photographes de mode elle fera les couvertures du ELLE et autres grands magazines de mode.
En 1999 elle décide de tout arrêter pour se réapproprier son image en se photographiant par morceaux choisis.
Son travail apparaît alors comme une quête identitaire avant de projeter son regard sur le monde. Son passage obligé au plus proche de son quotidien de jeune femme naissante donne lieux à toute une série d’autoportraits crus réalisés entre 1999 et 2001 et qui feront partis du groupe d’œuvres appelé « Stage Back » en contradiction affirmée avec le diktat des studios de mode.
Suivra un premier positionnement engagé et dénonciateur avec « FIGURE FOR THE BASE OF A CRUCIFICTION » qui amorce une réflexion sur l’acceptabilité de la position de la femme contemporaine telle qu’elle est vécue aujourd’hui avec ses repères imposés qui aboutit à la récente phase de son travail,
« THE PERFECT WOMAN IS A LIE ».”
Source: Acte2Galerie
To see more of Susanne’s work click here
║ GiesenLeenders ║
© Maurits Giesen & Ilse Leenders, Untitled #2, from the series Mimicry, 2003
© Maurits Giesen & Ilse Leenders, Untitled #3, from the series Mimicry, 2003
To see more of GiesenLeenders’ work click here
║ Ilse Leenders ║
© Ilse Leenders, Untitled #1, from the series Absorbent Absurdness
© Ilse Leenders, Untitled #3, from the series Absorbent Absurdness
To see more of Ilse’s work click here
║ Tobias & Joseph Feltus ║
© Tobias & Joseph Feltus, Two Gentlemen, 2.11.2008
© Tobias & Joseph Feltus, Two Gentlemen, 2.4.2008
© Tobias & Joseph Feltus, Imaginary Film Still (6.15-4.18), 2006
To see more of the Feltus’ work click here
║ Léa Crespi ║
© Léa Crespi, Untitled, from the series Lieux, 2008
© Léa Crespi, Untitled, from the series Lieux, 2008
© Léa Crespi, Untitled, from the series Lieux, 2008
“L’espace est toujours marqué par le temps. Un temps qui l’a dégradé ou, pour le moins, transformé. Mais cet espace, auquel nous n’aurions pas dû avoir accès, s’impose à nous, avec ses peintures écaillées, ses blessures de fils électriques abandonnés, ses minuscules désastres du quotidien parce qu’un corps le traverse, sans l’habiter.
Corps magnifique, sculptural, qui nous oblige à regarder, voir peut-être, l’espace dans lequel il évolue sans se l’approprier tant il est, toujours, à la limite de l’effacement, de la disparition. Comme une évidente présence qui nous dirait, déjà, que tout est fini. Un corps surgi de l’espace qui semble l’avoir généré et que nous ne pourrons apprivoiser.
Il y a de la séduction dans ce travail, de la séduction comme leurre. De la séduction parce qu’il peut sidérer. Et ce n’est pas le propos. Séduire pour mieux tromper, montrer pour mieux s’évader…
La modalité de l’exposition s’inscrit dans la logique du travail : il ne s’agit pas d’une exposition, ni d’une installation, mais d’une mise en espace d’années de travail qui se concrétisent dans un lieu.
Images “en l’air”, son qui les accompagne ou les caresse, juste une idée de l’importance du mot, trop lié aux images et aujourd’hui galvaudé, d’environnement.
Regardez, vous êtes dans un espace. Vous êtes qui ? Juste une branche ? Faut regarder aux environs…”
Corps magnifique, sculptural, qui nous oblige à regarder, voir peut-être, l’espace dans lequel il évolue sans se l’approprier tant il est, toujours, à la limite de l’effacement, de la disparition. Comme une évidente présence qui nous dirait, déjà, que tout est fini. Un corps surgi de l’espace qui semble l’avoir généré et que nous ne pourrons apprivoiser.
Il y a de la séduction dans ce travail, de la séduction comme leurre. De la séduction parce qu’il peut sidérer. Et ce n’est pas le propos. Séduire pour mieux tromper, montrer pour mieux s’évader…
La modalité de l’exposition s’inscrit dans la logique du travail : il ne s’agit pas d’une exposition, ni d’une installation, mais d’une mise en espace d’années de travail qui se concrétisent dans un lieu.
Images “en l’air”, son qui les accompagne ou les caresse, juste une idée de l’importance du mot, trop lié aux images et aujourd’hui galvaudé, d’environnement.
Regardez, vous êtes dans un espace. Vous êtes qui ? Juste une branche ? Faut regarder aux environs…”
Christian Caujolle
To see more of Léa’s work click here
║ Vlatka Horvat ║
© Vlatka Horvat, Ladder, from the series One-on-One, 2006
© Vlatka Horvat, Goal, from the series One-on-One, 2006
“In my work in general, I’m interested in presence—a person in relation to space and objects in it—how to inhabit space, how to negotiate ‘being there.’ In different ways I often depict encounters between a person and a physical location and the objects there. Often these focus on very simple, quite basic activities, such as hiding, searching, sheltering, ordering and organizing. The work is also preoccupied with the question of how we make sense of ourselves in the world, of having a body, of having contradictory desires and impulses, of wanting too much. In the Hiding images, this contradiction is revealed in that the attempts to be there are not to be there at the same time. For me, the idea of presence is always a kind of a problem, something uneasy and strained, which has to do with our desire to be revealed and known, while at the same time confronted with the fact that you really can never fully achieve either of those.
(…)
In all of the photo series I’m my own performer, but I’m not interested that she be read explicitly as me, with all of the particular psychology or autobiography that would come with that. I think of my own body in the work as a kind of a test pilot, a demonstrator, a stand-in, an example of a body and a person. Without the face as a marker of recognizable identity, the sense of the protagonist’s identity emerges from her encounter with the world and the way she seems to approach activities. With the head being gone, the body is where the experience of the world is located—the body becomes a “thinking body”—and by extension, the sense of getting to know the world (and oneself) comes from the body, from this embodied experience.”
Vlatka Horvat, interviewed for That is That
(…)
In all of the photo series I’m my own performer, but I’m not interested that she be read explicitly as me, with all of the particular psychology or autobiography that would come with that. I think of my own body in the work as a kind of a test pilot, a demonstrator, a stand-in, an example of a body and a person. Without the face as a marker of recognizable identity, the sense of the protagonist’s identity emerges from her encounter with the world and the way she seems to approach activities. With the head being gone, the body is where the experience of the world is located—the body becomes a “thinking body”—and by extension, the sense of getting to know the world (and oneself) comes from the body, from this embodied experience.”
Vlatka Horvat, interviewed for That is That
To read the full interview click here
To see more of Vlatka’s work click here
║ Scarlett Hooft Graafland ║
© Scarlett Hooft Graafland, Untitled, from the series The Day after Valentine, China, 2006
© Scarlett Hooft Graafland, Untitled, from the series The Day after Valentine, China, 2006
“A Chinese legend tells us the story of seven girls travelling up and forth from heaven to earth on Valentines Day on the head of an ox, until one of them decides to stay and live with her farmer lover.
The ancient tradition and the role of nature in Chinese culture does not seem to overlap much with the rapidly growing economic nation of today, where skyscrapers seem to come out of the ground like magic.”
Scarlett Hooft Graafland
“Using naïve and childlike colour palettes her photographs draw on the language of the surreal showing familiar objects out of context (…). Her humorous and unsettling juxtaposition of these everyday objects with the sparse, unforgiving landscape echoes the aesthetic of surrealists such as René Magritte. Hooft Graafland utilizes the medium of photography, associated with the representation of truth, to represent the fantastic and the irrational.”
Michael Hoppenb
The ancient tradition and the role of nature in Chinese culture does not seem to overlap much with the rapidly growing economic nation of today, where skyscrapers seem to come out of the ground like magic.”
Scarlett Hooft Graafland
“Using naïve and childlike colour palettes her photographs draw on the language of the surreal showing familiar objects out of context (…). Her humorous and unsettling juxtaposition of these everyday objects with the sparse, unforgiving landscape echoes the aesthetic of surrealists such as René Magritte. Hooft Graafland utilizes the medium of photography, associated with the representation of truth, to represent the fantastic and the irrational.”
Michael Hoppenb
To see more of Scarlett’s work click here
║ Naia del Castillo ║
© Naia del Castillo, The Magpie, from the series Offerings & Posessions, 2005
© Naia del Castillo, Archery, from the series About Seduction, 2002
© Naia del Castillo, Untitled, from the series About Seduction, 2003
“The evolution of her work is focused on the relation of woman to her physical and psychological environment. Concepts such as intimacy, seduction, home, domesticity, tradition and body are present in works that surpass the limits of photography and, to a certain point, redefine it. On the one hand, the dresses and many of the objects appearing in the photographs have been created, sewn, thought-up by the artist, to dress the models, to build their images; oftentimes these clothes and objects are exhibited together with the images. On the other hand, sculpture and that sense of arts and crafts traditionally viewed as characteristic of women, such as sewing, are at the origin of her dedication to art. In earlier series she amply developed themes such as the relation of woman to her everyday surroundings, to domesticity, to her mate and in a very subtle way, to sex and she later explored aspects of seduction and domination exercised in relationships.”
Rosa Olivares
Rosa Olivares
To see more of Naia’s work click here
║ Cabello / Carceller ║
© Cabello / Carceller, Power Exercises #6, from the series Power Exercises, 2005
© Cabello / Carceller, Power Exercises #1, from the series Power Exercises, 2005
“In societies openly hostile towards anything they cannot pigeonhole as being “correct”, the construction of a real or mental place where one can live with an acceptable level of freedom becomes an indispensable goal. Each of us builds our own personal utopia wherever we are able.”
Cabello / Carceller
Cabello / Carceller
“The work of Cabello / Carceller does not limit its focus to dealing with themes revolving around gender-related codes established and accepted by society, in addition, it provides a thought-provoking defence of the individual search for self-realization. They defend the goodness of difference, in short, of individual freedom. One of the tools in this search is the journey, and though the destination or objective of this journey may not be clear, it will, nevertheless, lead towards the discovery of new realities.”
Pia Ogea (source: Elba Benítez Gallery)
Pia Ogea (source: Elba Benítez Gallery)
To see more of Cabello / Carceller-s work click here
║ Zhang Huan ║
© Zhang Huan, Shanghai Family Tree, 2001, Shanghai, China
“Family Tree broadens this vein of exploration to describe the domestic scene as a site of initiation into ideology. The photographic series comprises nine sequential images made at regular interval from dawn until dusk on one day. Again, they all feature the face of Zhang Huan, the physical trace of his lineage. Throughout this process, the artist dictated to three calligraphers a stream of familiar names, personal stories, learned tales, and random thoughts. Each was transcribed in ink onto the artist’s face until, at the end of the day, he was completely covered in a thick layer of black pigment. Here, the contents and processes of an individual consciousness, learned from forebears and / or organized according to systems of belief conditioned by experience with them, become a mask or second skin. They are inseparable from that which the rest of the world takes to be a unique identity and original producing consciousness.”
Thom Collins
Thom Collins
© Zhang Huan, Family Tree, 2000, New York, USA
“This idea is made iconic in Foam. Zhang Huan’s face is isolated in the ten pictures in the series. In each, he appears covered in white suds like sea foam with a snapshot of members of his wife’s family or his own bursting out of his mouth as if it were a sound. Here, Zhang Huan appears new-born – covered with a substance that might refer to both the human birth process and the birth of a mythological character in the waves – but also in the throes of an irresistible utterance. This speech act, his pictures suggest, while an expression of self, has also inevitably been shaped by his own lineage and that of his life partner and mother of his children. His ancestors speak through him.”
Thom Collins
© Zhang Huan, Foam, 1998, Beijing, China
Thom Collins
© Zhang Huan, Foam, 1998, Beijing, China
“I invited 3 calligraphers to write texts on my face from early morning until night. I told them what they should write and to always keep a serious attitude when writing the texts even when my face turns to dark. My face followed the daylight till it slowly darkened. I cannot tell who I am. My identity has disappeared.“
Zhang Huan
Zhang Huan
To see more of Zhang’s work click here
║ Risk Hazekamp ║
© Risk Hazekamp, Under Influence/Catherine Opie, from the series Under Influence, 2007
© Risk Hazekamp, Superman, from the series Straight from Berlin, 2007
“This tension between the biological and the social -or even aesthetic- is echoed in other new works such as “Superman”. The eponymous logo stencilled onto a female chest mainlines its point about our individual body in contrast to what we feel about it or how we might actually want to look. And, interestingly for Hazekamp’s artistic development, together with the other works in the new series, it does so with a more gritty, faux documentary style that we associate with both Berlin underground cultures and German art photography. If femininity -whatever that means- has still not penetrated the flesh of Risk Hazekamp, it seems that the history of her new home certainly has.”
Ken Pratt
Ken Pratt
To see more of Risk’s work click here
║ Atta Kim ║
© Atta Kim, The Museum Project 019, from the series Field, 1997
© Atta Kim, The Museum Project 011, from the series Field, 1997“In The Museum Project, made between 1995 and 2002, Atta Kim inverts the public space of the museum and its system of display, placing the public, oftentimes naked, within the “private” space of glass display containers. Playing the role of excavator and curator, the artist stages and photographs tableaux involving sex, violence, political ideology, and religion, creating his own museum in the process.
The transparent box-shaped containers play a key role in this project, heightening the viewer’s awareness of the relationship between observer and object and creating a space where living objects are enshrined. In some images, as in works from the “Field” series, multiple bodies are pressed together or hunched within the confines of a small box; in others, as in works from the “People” series, figures are presented carrying out commonplace activities within the box, such as sharing a meal or simply standing quietly. By isolating and displaying individuals, The Museum Project addresses issues of surveillance, alienation, vulnerability, and Eastern philosophy.”
source: Yossi Milo Gallery
║ Melanie Bonajo ║
© Melanie Bonajo, Waiting for something beautiful to happen, 2002
© Melanie Bonajo, Are all cliches true o3, 2007
“My ideas are jingles in my head, they come to me. To be able to make a song i have to give stucture to the melodies, like i have to put the thoughts and idea’s into matter to be able to impart the information and touch someone like it touched me first.
My work is an irregular impulse of experiences and aesthetic enjoyments stemming from the questions I have and the things that I know. I am not interested in a particular truth or a common reality, but I do have to understand and embody my truth, which I find from looking within. Although these things might be universal, consequently, questioning myself leads to the act of questioning you. Nothing should control the spirit.
My method of practice, making photographs, is simply a way of recording these thoughts. Primary to this visual diary is the notion of breaking free from everything that holds one down, such as: emotions, patterns, motions and
expectation.
I attempt to shape awareness by giving expression to the contradictions of contemporary life -with dignity. Re-contextualising and reframing the world through my lens, I attempt to leave a feeling of something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar or inexplicable. I create wonder with vengeance about the true nature of things, from my point of view. This outcome – art – must hit someone with its mental and emotional power so you can feel what you see. You can not turn your head away. I believe our language has to be physical in order to touch someone. After any word or image which is a collection of many words hids energy.
Holding your gaze upon my photographs is an invitation to play. Confrontation can be liberating but it can also be bizarre. Melancholy and humor are important aspects for me. It might hurt a little, too.”
Melanie Bonajo
My work is an irregular impulse of experiences and aesthetic enjoyments stemming from the questions I have and the things that I know. I am not interested in a particular truth or a common reality, but I do have to understand and embody my truth, which I find from looking within. Although these things might be universal, consequently, questioning myself leads to the act of questioning you. Nothing should control the spirit.
My method of practice, making photographs, is simply a way of recording these thoughts. Primary to this visual diary is the notion of breaking free from everything that holds one down, such as: emotions, patterns, motions and
expectation.
I attempt to shape awareness by giving expression to the contradictions of contemporary life -with dignity. Re-contextualising and reframing the world through my lens, I attempt to leave a feeling of something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar or inexplicable. I create wonder with vengeance about the true nature of things, from my point of view. This outcome – art – must hit someone with its mental and emotional power so you can feel what you see. You can not turn your head away. I believe our language has to be physical in order to touch someone. After any word or image which is a collection of many words hids energy.
Holding your gaze upon my photographs is an invitation to play. Confrontation can be liberating but it can also be bizarre. Melancholy and humor are important aspects for me. It might hurt a little, too.”
Melanie Bonajo
