Caitlin-mcc03 - Caitlin MccARThy
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Christian Boltanski
In his installations and mixed-media works, Christian Boltanski uses photographs and found objects to question memory and individuality. An awareness of mortality, and of the general tenuousness of human existence, haunts his work. According to the artist, while individual memories might prove to be fragile, they are still filled with truthful yet unique values, making it the reason why he has often been choosing daily items as main creative elements to construct an archive of humanity
Christian Boltanski, Chance-The Wheel of Fortune, Installation View “Storage Memory”, Power Station of Art- Shanghai, 2018, Courtesy Power Station of Art
Christian Boltanski, Humains, Installation View “Storage Memory”, Power Station of Art- Shanghai, 2018, Courtesy Power Station of Art
Christian Boltanski, Personnes, Installation View “Storage Memory”, Power Station of Art- Shanghai, 2018, Courtesy Power Station of Art
In French, the word “Personnes” has dual meanings, referring to either “persons” or “nobody”. Here, the artist uses this double-edged word, which denotes presence but literally contains absence, to emphasise the inescapability of death and how chance watches over the destiny of each.
Koh Myung Keun
Hong Kong 12-1 (Edition 3), 2012, 66 x 44 x 20 cm, Digital film 3D-collage, plastic.
Koh uses photography, a two-dimensional medium, but transforms it into a three dimensional piece with a unique technique. Koh makes digital prints of his photos onto film, which he then laminates with clear plastic, and constructs into three-dimensional forms using a heat gun. The semi-transparent photographic layers have been constructed as if they were the walls of a building, but not as an attempt to recreate the structure of the subject. What we see is a paradoxical space, where the interior seems to be the exterior itself. Koh has been using this method since the 1980’s, creating series based on three main subjects: nature, architecture, and the figure.
Beijing 09- 4 (Edition 3), 2013, 86 x 43 x 12 cm, Digital film 3D-collage, plastic.
Losel Yauch
Yauch focuses on sheer materials and the shape of light as a visual tool to communicate the feeling of loss and examine the presence of absence, fragility of form, and on a broader scale, the concept of grief. Her paintings articulate subtle yet considered distinctions between the intangible and the out of reach.
Deirdre Frost
Áitreabh 2021, oil and acrylic on birch panels attached together with lift-off hinges, approx. 350 x 300 cm.
Baile 2021, Oil on board, 80 cm x 120 cm.
Leo Gabin
Installation view, Independent Brussels, 2016
"In this age of the excessive use of images, for us it’s now more relevant than ever to use found footage and recycled imagery. Especially with an abundance of amateurish made “private” imagery put readily available online, the idea of authorship becomes even more questionable. But raising this question can be seen as the essence of the work."
-Leo Gabin, Modern Matter, June 2013
Now well known on the contemporary art scene, the Leo Gabin collective is interested in the thousands of images that form our visual and virtual, common and quotidian landscape. Internet represents a window onto the world where images of all kinds circulate and cohabit, providing a mass of information that must be deciphered. By appropriating these visions, the collective creates new works that capture this incessant movement on canvas, in silkscreen prints, videos and installations. Today, when everybody is an author and is helping enrich this virtual universe, the works of art elaborated by the trio attain a new dimension.
In them, techniques and materials combine yet always leave the original image, the creative source, visible. Leo Gabin is particularly interested in American culture, so important in the three artists’ young years. It stages the stereotypes, excesses and paradoxes to which it can give rise.
https://contemporary-art.mirabaud.com/en/artists/detail/leo-gabin
Further on Grand Ave, 2016,
Lacquer and acrylic on aluminum,
75 5/8 x 53 1/8 inches (192 x 135 cm)
At It Again, 2014 Lacquer, spray paint, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas 205 x 150 cm (80.71 x 59.06 in)
Rochestown Road in Rochestown, Co Cork.
The estate was originally designed by BOC Architects and built in 2008. The four homes are currently on the market for €1.24 million, 16 years after they were originally meant to be sold.
The properties have no internal work completed at all. This means, once you go inside, they are nothing more than the skeleton of the house. There are no electrical fittings, no running water and all windows are completely bordered up - some with wooden boards, others with metal.
Leticia Lampert - (de) construction
(de) construction
The city grows spontaneously. Disordered. Up and down, wherever there is space. Every style is mixed together. There is no development plan for the cities in Brazil, so they become a huge architectonic collage. It is after this perception of the city that this work was created. As a play, collages are made from disconnected pieces of houses and buildings in order to create other ones. These new buildings are strange but, even though, they seem very familiar, once it is like that our perception works. The series consists of 19 collages
(de)constructions #4, Photography and collage, 82 x 130 cm.
(de)constructions #17, Photography and collage, 67 x 100 cm.
Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting, and the Unmade House
Matta-Clark understood the emotional impact buildings have on people. In a 1976 notebook entry, he expressed his goal to “transform a location into a mental state.” This link between a home and its residents was reflected in the letters he received after the reveal of Splitting.
Although the home was viewed as a private space, families were also urged to participate in neighborhood networks that valued conformity. These connections were presented as key to the "good life." Matta-Clark examined the motivations behind the creation and promotion of this ideal, questioning whose interests it truly served.
Instead of viewing architecture as a solution to housing issues—having witnessed the effects of post-war developments first-hand—Matta-Clark used architecture as a medium for sculpture, bringing the cuts of buildings to life in his photographs. The act of transforming abandoned buildings and documenting the process was central to his practice, as was the social commentary expressed through the boldness of these transformative actions.
"Is it the fear of forgetting that triggers the desire to remember, or is it perhaps the other way around?" (Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, 2003)
