Re-Sign
The exhibition delves into the conformity of human nature, most particularly exploring ideas surrounding traditional and imposed constructs of the "real" and their propagation and validation throughout contemporary society. Each artist does this following a process of examination, subsequently subverting and destabilizing a chosen “signifier”.
Cécile Emmanuelle BORRA explores female desire and the increasing commercialization of the male body through a colorful assemblage of fashion, beauty and home-ware accessories, magazine cut-outs and trophy paraphernalia combined with images of male genitalia and phallic mock-ups. Issues of fragmentation and objectification of the male body echo the often-ridiculous representations of the female body in fashion and advertising.
Romy and Maxim NORTHOVER investigate the concept of 'seduction by artifice'. Their work features highly fetishised desirable objects, and appropriations of luxurious façades. They frequently pastiche gendered characterization; through sound and video they expose absurd scenarios present in media culture and create atmosphere through a series of fictional vignettes that render expected roles as implausible.
Hanae UTAMURA contemplates the human condition in different circumstances such as the city or a natural landscape. During her performance, disguised in a black suit, her intervention to the public space/natural landscape is a process of transformation of energy into mundane to divine. Her object exhibits the "memorial" of her intervention which goes beyond the mere documentation of the event, raising political, social and behavioral critique of the environments and contexts where the work situates.