kaleidoscopics
2018
Series of 12 digital photographs 45 x 45 cm, Colour
Series of 6 digital photographs 45 x 45 cm, B&W&Colour
Series of 3 digital photographs 75 x 75, B&W
Series of 5 digital photographs 30 x 30 cm, B&W
Tint jet impression of mineral pigment on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Paper 188gr and individualised in colour frame with form engraved sand jet on the glass
In a series of works done in 2017 and 2018 about Hovland, Dias & Riedweg revisit the work of the North American photographer, artist and activist Charles Hovland (1954). Between 1980 and 2000, Hovland published every week an ad at the New Yorker newspaper The Village Voice, announcing his services as a photographer to document people’s sexual fantasies. As a result, he silently built up a collection of 3.000 35mm black and white film rolls of anonymous people who hired his services and about 450.000 color slides, which revealed over 1.500 models for male nude magazines during two decades.
In their approach to Hovland’s work, Dias & Riedweg have made one single channel video “Waiting for a Model” that portrays the photographer in his studio, as well as two video-installations “Fantasy Archive” and “Romance Archive” and a series of photographs so called “Kaleidoscopics”. This group of works, entitled “Camera Contact”, investigates issues related to the popularisation of the digital image in detriment of analog photography and thereby materialize the profound change in the representation of sexuality and gender issues that takes place then.
In the series of photographs Kaleidoscopics (2018), Dias & Riedweg re-photographed Hovland's layouts for the porn magazines at their own computer screen during the editing of the videos that integrate Camera Contact. As in the video piece Arquivo Romance, the artists use a kaleidoscope between the camera lens and the subject. In both works, the camera is guided by the movement of the kaleidoscope, producing a focus change from one mirror to another and consequently creating a sparkling multiple fragmented final image.
Installation at Vermelho, São Paulo, 2018
Installation at Vermelho, São Paulo, 2018
Installation at the Biennale Images, Vevey, Switzerland, 2018
the Kaleidoscope set between the camera lens and the photographed subject creates a fragmentation of the final image into multiple focus, underlyning thereby the use of plural narratives, a recurrent strategy in many of Dias & Riedwegs’ works.
jan fjeld, press text of the exhibition camera contact at galeria vermelho, São Paulo, 2018
THE PROCESS
