{"id":50064,"date":"2017-04-07T14:14:54","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T12:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=50064"},"modified":"2017-04-07T14:14:54","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T12:14:54","slug":"sara-cwynar-multimedia-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/sara-cwynar-multimedia-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Multimedia Artist Questioning Relationships Between the Real and the Represented"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Sara “Encyclopedia Grid (Acropolis)”, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Foxy Production, New York<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s a drab Tuesday afternoon in January, and despite being holed up inside her new studio in Brooklyn, Sara Cwynar<\/a> is in high spirits, talking about her video essay \u201cSoft Film\u201d. \u201cIt\u2019s a good place to start,\u201d says the 31-year-old. \u201cI actually consider this piece to be a retrospective of my practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

“I started out as a graphic designer. [It] was all about communicating clearly but making something look beautiful” \u2013 Sara Cwynar<\/h2>\n

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. \u201cI feel that it states my creative intentions as an artist,\u201d she reveals. \u201cIt contains so much of what I want to talk about. It\u2019s my favourite piece so far.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Sara “Women”, 2015.\u00a0Courtesy of the artist, Zabludowicz Collection and Foxy Production, New York. Photo by Mark Woods<\/p>\n

What makes “Soft Film” resonate is its seductive pop aesthetic, which aunts Cwynar\u2019s signature knack for assembling and manipulating text with found imagery \u2013 be it antiquated product packaging, magazine advertisements or cuttings from foreign reference books. She attributes this skill to her background in graphic design. \u201cI was a part- time artist for a number of years. I started out as a graphic designer at The New York Times,\u201d she explains. “That was all about communicating clearly but making something look beautiful.\u201d
\nDuring that period, Cwynar unveiled her first art project, \u201cKitsch Encyclopedia\u201d (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 \u2018C\u2019, for example, and you\u2019ll find doctored menu options for Chinese food, while \u2018W\u2019 presents a beguiling retro reflection of a woman applying make-up.<\/p>\n

“Sometimes people seem to read my work as simply re-hashing of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, but I feel that I\u2019ve worked hard to insert markers of the current moment” \u2013 Sara Cwynar<\/h2>\n

The book was fuelled by her interest in revisiting Baudrillard\u2019s definition of kitsch from his classic 1981 text \u201cSimulacra and Simulations\u201d, which described the term as a manifestation of the hyperreal \u2013 simulations of the world that have started to matter more than the reality they represent. \u201cI felt this was the foundation for a lot of present discussions about image culture,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd also how new technologies change our relationship to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sara “Display Stand No. 64 CONS H. 8 1\/4″ W. 24″ D. 16 1\/2\u201d”, 2014.\u00a0Courtesy of the artist and Foxy Production, New York<\/p>\n

\nIn addition to bolstering her profile with glowing reviews, “Kitsch Encyclopedia” provided the footing for her next body of work, \u201cFlat Death\u201d (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, \u201cIsland Dome (Plastic Cups)\u201d 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. \u201cSometimes people seem to read my work as simply re-hashing of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, but I feel that I\u2019ve worked hard to insert markers of the current moment,\u201d affirms Cywnar.\n<\/div>\n
\nThe aforementioned work, in addition to the UK premiere of \u201cSoft Film\u201d 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, \u201cYou are Looking at Something That Never Occurred\u201d 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. \u201cSara\u2019s work offers a fascinating reflection on the powerful remnants of the photographic process,\u201d says Luckraft. \u201cBe 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.\u201d\n<\/div>\n

\"Sara “Color Column 1”, 2014.\u00a0Courtesy of the artist and Foxy Production, New York<\/p>\n

\nWith 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. \u201cIt\u2019s very exciting to be part of it,\u201d says Cwynar.\n<\/div>\n
\nInvariably, the continued support of the Zabludowicz Collection has been invaluable to Cywnar, who, in addition to the group exhibition, will join the institution\u2019s Artists\u2019 Residency initiative in Las Vegas this February. The glitzy, frenetic location seems apt for a young woman preoccupied with kitsch and the hyperreal. \u201cYes, it\u2019s going to be absolutely awesome,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I\u2019m going to work intensely to make sure I get everything I need for my new project.\u201d 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. \u201cI was struck by the way that a colour was used to help sell it,\u201d she reveals. \u201cRose gold has such an interesting history, in that it was invented for people that already had enough regular gold,\u201d she adds.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"Sara “Soft Film”, 2016.\u00a0Courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

Once again, postmodern ideals add fuel to the fire \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m mostly interested in how that phone is emblematic of promising us something optimistic, but just doesn\u2019t deliver,\u201d she says. I liken the product to the Hoover Dam \u2013 another symbol of misplaced hope \u2013 which she is due to film from a helicopter using her favourite Linhof Master Technika camera. \u201cI\u2019m also shooting some still life photographs to add into the mix,\u201d she says. \u201c That polarisation is important to me, theoretically and visually. When something is aesthetically pleasing it develops a logic or reason for being. There\u2019s something very important to being moved by how beautiful a work is. It doesn\u2019t always have to be the case, but it\u2019s so satisfying when it does happen.\u201d\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n\u201cYou Are Looking at Something That Never Occurred<\/a>\u201d is on display at London’s Zabludowicz Collection until 9 July 2017<\/strong>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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