7 April, 2017

The Multimedia Artist Questioning Relationships Between the Real and the Represented

“Encyclopedia Grid (Acropolis)”, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Foxy Production, New York

It’s a drab Tuesday afternoon in January, and despite being holed up inside her new studio in Brooklyn, Sara Cwynar is in high spirits, talking about her video essay “Soft Film”. “It’s a good place to start,” says the 31-year-old. “I actually consider this piece to be a retrospective of my practice.”

“I started out as a graphic designer. [It] was all about communicating clearly but making something look beautiful” – Sara Cwynar

Debuted last year at Art Basel, and comprised of footage featuring random objects, hands fondling boxes, portraits of strangers, and Cwynar posing, the film addresses her ongoing fascination with the effect of discarded imagery and objects. In doing so, the audience is urged to consider the lives of these items over time, how value can warp, and how the feted becomes foreign. “I feel that it states my creative intentions as an artist,” she reveals. “It contains so much of what I want to talk about. It’s my favourite piece so far.”

“Women”, 2015. Courtesy of the artist, Zabludowicz Collection and Foxy Production, New York. Photo by Mark Woods

What makes “Soft Film” resonate is its seductive pop aesthetic, which aunts Cwynar’s signature knack for assembling and manipulating text with found imagery – be it antiquated product packaging, magazine advertisements or cuttings from foreign reference books. She attributes this skill to her background in graphic design. “I was a part- time artist for a number of years. I started out as a graphic designer at The New York Times,” she explains. “That was all about communicating clearly but making something look beautiful.”
During that period, Cwynar unveiled her first art project, “Kitsch Encyclopedia” (2013), a beautifully realised tome compiling photos with essays by theorists including Milan Kundera, Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard, in addition to her own writing. The result was a compelling formulation of the relationship between kitsch and popular imagery. Turn to entry ‘C’, for example, and you’ll find doctored menu options for Chinese food, while ‘W’ presents a beguiling retro reflection of a woman applying make-up.

“Sometimes people seem to read my work as simply re-hashing of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, but I feel that I’ve worked hard to insert markers of the current moment” – Sara Cwynar

The book was fuelled by her interest in revisiting Baudrillard’s definition of kitsch from his classic 1981 text “Simulacra and Simulations”, which described the term as a manifestation of the hyperreal – simulations of the world that have started to matter more than the reality they represent. “I felt this was the foundation for a lot of present discussions about image culture,” she says. “And also how new technologies change our relationship to the world.”

“Display Stand No. 64 CONS H. 8 1/4″ W. 24″ D. 16 1/2””, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Foxy Production, New York

In addition to bolstering her profile with glowing reviews, “Kitsch Encyclopedia” provided the footing for her next body of work, “Flat Death” (2014). A collection of curious photographs, the artist blurred the line between representation and reality by her use of sculpture, re-photography, collage and digital distortion. For instance, “Island Dome (Plastic Cups)” depicts a stacked totem of plastic cups and banal tupperware behind a glossy tarpaulin backdrop, which was photographed, printed, tiled using tabs of green sticky tape, and then re-photographed with the insertion of a grainy picture of an Islamic building. It is at once nostalgic and new, and impossible to attribute to a specific period of time. “Sometimes people seem to read my work as simply re-hashing of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, but I feel that I’ve worked hard to insert markers of the current moment,” affirms Cywnar.

The aforementioned work, in addition to the UK premiere of “Soft Film” and several of her other still life assemblages, will feature in a dynamic upcoming exhibition at the Zabludowicz Collection in London this spring. Curated by Paul Luckraft, “You are Looking at Something That Never Occurred” delves into the extensive Zabludowicz archive, cherry-picking work that uses photography to question the parameters between past and present, factual and fictional. Cwynar joins a roster of 13 artists, such as the iconic Richard Prince and Jeff Wall, alongside edging talents like Elad Lassry. “Sara’s work offers a fascinating reflection on the powerful remnants of the photographic process,” says Luckraft. “Be they bodies, architecture or jewellery boxes, they form part of an ever-expanding archive, stretching both back in time, but also expanding forward as their meanings shift when recombined in a new light.”

“Color Column 1”, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Foxy Production, New York

With the aim of mapping the transition from the decisive moment of street photography to novel, new-fangled approaches to picture making, the show draws insightful parallels between analysis, composition and construction. “It’s very exciting to be part of it,” says Cwynar.

Invariably, the continued support of the Zabludowicz Collection has been invaluable to Cywnar, who, in addition to the group exhibition, will join the institution’s Artists’ Residency initiative in Las Vegas this February. The glitzy, frenetic location seems apt for a young woman preoccupied with kitsch and the hyperreal. “Yes, it’s going to be absolutely awesome,” she says. “But I’m going to work intensely to make sure I get everything I need for my new project.” This is, as it turns out, is a complicated, labour intensive video that she started during her MFA in photography at Yale University in 2016, inspired by the release of the rose gold iPhone. “I was struck by the way that a colour was used to help sell it,” she reveals. “Rose gold has such an interesting history, in that it was invented for people that already had enough regular gold,” she adds.

“Soft Film”, 2016. Courtesy of the artist

Once again, postmodern ideals add fuel to the fire – “I’m mostly interested in how that phone is emblematic of promising us something optimistic, but just doesn’t deliver,” she says. I liken the product to the Hoover Dam – another symbol of misplaced hope – which she is due to film from a helicopter using her favourite Linhof Master Technika camera. “I’m also shooting some still life photographs to add into the mix,” she says. “ That polarisation is important to me, theoretically and visually. When something is aesthetically pleasing it develops a logic or reason for being. There’s something very important to being moved by how beautiful a work is. It doesn’t always have to be the case, but it’s so satisfying when it does happen.”

“You Are Looking at Something That Never Occurred” is on display at London’s Zabludowicz Collection until 9 July 2017