Portraiture in the age of the iPhone gets it’s close up
February 2012, By Michael Wilson, Time Out New York
In “Facetime,” a modified transplant from Copenhagen gallery IMO Projects, curators Toke Lykkeberg and Julia Rodrigues assemble a diverse set of works that filter the traditional portrait form through a contemporary sensibility informed by digital technology and Web 2.0. As head-to-head interpersonal confrontations occur increasingly via laptop or smartphone, the curators argue, the ways in which we represent, perceive and read the face are altered.
But even as gadgets destabilize and reconfigure our habits of looking, much remains the same. And for all the show’s vaunted neophilia, plenty of the work in “Facetime” has a likably timeless quality. Both A Kassen and Rosalind Nashashibi, for example, play the familiar game of picking out human features in inanimate objects.
Many of the faces featured here are themselves of a certain age. Odires Mlászho works some effective collage magic on shots of classical statuary, collaging modern male faces onto their ancient female counterparts with a directness that recalls John Stezaker’s cut-ups of vintage Hollywood headshots. French artist Zevs photographs existing portraits of key figures in the science of light, allowing his camera flash to white out the venerable mugs of Plato, Louis Daguerre and Thomas Edison. And Zev’s countryman Michel Journiac, in his 1972 Hommage à Freud, photographs himself in the guise of his own mom and pop. But the most intense exchange in “Facetime” is represented by Jan S. Hansen’s aquarelles of Rorschach-like blots purportedly derived from a kind of Sufi staring contest—uh, ritual. Just remember not to blink!
Ao mesmo tempo, Leya Mira Brander exibe numa pequena sala uma instalação com suas belas e delicadas gravuras em metal - algumas delas, bem pequenas. Imagens de um repertório que Leya vem criando desde 1997, elas se repetem, se combinam formando "infinitas possibilidades" de narrativas. Já na entrada da galeria, Fabiano Marques apresenta o trabalho Xadrez Combinado.