Soft Truths / Rozostřené Pravdy
IAN WIECZOREK
Galerie Katakomby
Centrum Experimentálního Divadla Brno, Česká Republika 11.září - 3. říjen 2015
“The poor image is a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard. As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image … The poor image is an illicit fifth-generation bastard of an original image. Its genealogy is dubious… It often defies patrimony, national culture, or indeed copyright… It mocks the promises of digital technology... The poor image is no longer about the real thing - the originary original. In short: it is about reality.”
- Hito Steyerl, In Defense of the Poor Image
Visual artist Ian Wieczorek’s practice is largely concerned with notions of citizenship and the dynamics of contemporary society in both in micro- and macro- contexts. His work explores the implications of contemporary visual vernacular and how this digital currency is becoming increasingly important in locating social and cultural identity and experience. Low quality digital images are everywhere in the modern day experience of digital technology and Wieczorek is interested in how this phenomenon mediates the way we perceive and relate to the world.
Wieczorek’s practice has been primarily centred on the medium of oil paint on canvas, and how establishing a dialogue between ‘traditional’ medium and contemporary digital medium might contribute to contemporary critical discourse. The results of this process are meticulously rendered paintings of ‘found’ low resolution images harvested from the internet - from CCTV footage, streamed news videos, mobile phone captures, missing person posters - that have been stripped of their specific contexts. The low quality of this type of digital imagery results in the phenomenon of dissemblance , transcending original documentary intentions and assuming more subjective significance - ‘weak’ images that embody more powerful associative connotations (a concession to Baudrillard’s ‘hyperreal’ experience).
The ubiquity of digital imagery has provided a step-off point for various strands of inquiry including the Closed Circuit works (based on CCTV stills). Citizens and the Missing series presents a series of snapshot portraits from ‘missing person’ posters, of people who are linked only through events that had not yet occurred at the time the photographs were taken. The Autopyre series posits the burning car is a universally recognised symbol that references writers such as JG Ballard (in his speculative fiction) and Slavoj Žižek (in his critical writings).
The video Everything That Rises Must Converge presents what appears to be a disembodied flame, but is in fact inverted footage of a torrent of water. The imagery transcends its physical origin and becomes its opposite: water turns to fire in a trompe l’oeil visual/aural ‘alchemical’ transformation, acknowledging Mario Costa’s proposal that new technologies are creating conditions for a new kind of expression of the Sublime.
Literatura k textu:
William J. Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth the Post-Photographic Era, MIT Press, 1992
Hito Steyerl, In Defense of the Poor Image, e-flux journal #10, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/ in-defense-of-the-poor-image/, 2009
Georges Didi-Huberman, Fra Angelico: Dissemblance and Figuration, University of Chicago Press, 1995
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Hill & Wang, 1981
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra & Simulation, University of Michigan Press, 1994; also The Gulf War did not Happen, Power Institute of Fine Arts Sydney, 2004
Slavoj Žižek, Violence, Profile Books, 2009
Mario Costa, Le sublime technologique, Lausanne: IDERIVE, 1990
O UMĚLCE
Ian Wieczorek je vizuální umělec, žijící a pracující v hrabství Mayo v Irské republice. Jeho umělecké aktivity jsou zaměřeny na malbu, video, instalace a kurátorství.
Od roku 2003 vystavoval na celé řadě kolektivních výstav v Irské republice i mimo ni - v Severním Irsku, Německu, Francii, Portugalsku, USA a v Číně. Samostatné výstavy měl v Irské republice, Severním Irsku a Spojeném království. Také vytvořil dvě zadání veřejných uměleckých děl v Irsku a byl kurátorem několika výstav. Současná výstava “SOFT TRUTHS” v galerii C.E.D. KATAKOMBY v Brně je jeho jedenáctou samostatnou výstavou.
Podrobné informace naleznete na webových stránkách: www.ianwieczorek.com
Foto: Michael Gannon
Ian Wieczorek e: mail@ianwieczorek.com w: www.ianwieczorek.com