September 8 – October 24, 2015
In partnership with
Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal – 14th edition
The Post-Photographic Condition
Guest Curator: Joan Fontcuberta
Opening
Friday, September 11, 4 pm
Sean Snyder explores the anti-artistic domain of research-based art: he shuns the creation of “works” in any productivist sense, and opts instead for case studies that challenge the conditions of the image. “Despite the ever-increasing amount of images we are exposed to,” he writes, “it could be conjectural that we see less. We see less of the image itself, overpowered by the meaning imposed by the discursive context in which it appears.”1 Our gaze is clouded because images are not windows open to the world but the distorting constructs of propaganda.
Noam Chomsky has said that “propaganda is to democracy what violence is to the totalitarian state.”2 Propaganda and violence are “engines of history” that adapt to the regime of power. Faced with these engines, we can react in different ways, either accepting that manipulation is inherent in the image and going on to stress the ideological validity of the cause that justifies it, or unmasking the manipulation as a move towards deactivating it.
At a time when so many images circulate and fascinate, precisely because they are so toxic and nasty, Snyder carries out what could be thought of, in the clinical sense, as a purge. In the exhibition, he demonstrates this through the fundamental recognition of the raw materials of visual information (ink on paper, celluloid, magnetic tape, algorithms and pixels) and his handling of the rhetorics of persuasion.
Captives as we are in our purgatory, power instrumentalizes the image just as much as the image constitutes a manifestation of power. Snyder may not be able to drive the demons out, but by restoring the abilities to see and think, he shows us how to recognize them.
- Sean Snyder, “Optics. Compression. Propaganda,” in Sean Snyder: Optics, Compression, Propaganda, exh. cat., eds. Sean Snyder and Silvia Sgualdini (London: Lisson Gallery; Cologne: Buchhandlung Walther König, 2007), n.pag.
- Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, 2nd ed. (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), 20–21.
Sean Snyder was born in 1972 in Virginia Beach, and lives and works in Berlin. Since 1998, his works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions, including at The Barbican Center (2014), the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2013), the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2012), the Israeli Center for Digital Art, Tel Aviv (2010), Artist Space, New York (2010), the ICA, London (2009), the Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm (2009), Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris (2009), Lisson Gallery in London (2009), Galerie Neu in Berlin (2007) and at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (2007). He has received many grants and awards, including from the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Oslo (2006) and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Sofia (2004). He is represented by Lisson Gallery in London, Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris, and Galerie Neu in Berlin.
The Post-Photographic Condition
We find ourselves at a crucial moment in the history of images. The proliferation of cameras and digital point-and-shoot devices, the incorporation of picture taking into cell phones, the Internet, social networks, and CCTV are part of new experimentation and new creative processes. Today, how can we define photographic quality? Is it possible to identify the photographic canon that is being created in the new vernacular spaces of the image?
Around the theme The Post-Photographic Condition, Joan Fontcuberta, curator for this edition of Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, explores the dramatic transformations the image has undergone due to the impact of the second digital revolution, in which the Internet and smartphones play a prominent role. It features works of artists who critically react to the massive presence of images and their absolute availability in our current visual culture.
