PERSPECTIVES, 2005/06, Photo Print, Stempel, Unikat Je 50 x 44cm, in Passepartout, gerahmt

Installation view

Out of «Perspectives» 2005/06, unicums, photo prints, stamps, 50 x 44 cm

Taken from the Internet, the act of making the photo prints is missing. By using an outmostly anonymous source and displaying the optical constitution of a colour print, the image discloses its material consistency which allows it to unmask the illusion of comfortably consumable facts. The images are oscillating between aphoristic text and image, creating a very associative capacity. This leads away from what is called “objective information” – often foisted on photographs. Shahryar Nashat suggests that the association with another image or with language is the aspect that makes an image really challenging.

Stills from «Modern Body Comedy» 2006, S8 Film transferred onto Digi Beta, 2' 45''

«Modern Body Comedy» is shot on a bare theatre stage in super 8mm film and later converted to DVD digital format. The work combines miscellaneous forms of theatre genres such as drama and comedy and also reveals the act of creating artistic situations. The observer is confronted with two male characters who are slowly getting involved with one another. A latent homo-erotic tension and a subtle power struggle provide a narrative base. By letting one of them exercise control and power over the other, Nashat indicates a delicate tightrope act between being a self-determined individual and being manipulated into entering a role. Nashat, always interested in the dynamics of human bodies, builds up an outrageous tension, which is unpredictably dissolved by a physical incident reminding of a very popular slapstick element. In Nashat’s words: “I think that this incident, referring to burlesque comedy, is the moment of breakdown, both in the narrative and in the superstructure of the work. Everything collapses because anything is deconstructible.”

Facing Nashat’s artwork enables visitors to experience surprising juxtapositions of reverse moments which offer a most favourable opportunity to sharpen one’s own perception.

Sharyar Nashat, who was born 1975 in Teheran and grew up in Switzerland, lives and works in Paris at the present. He received his education at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Art in Geneva and at the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. In 2005 he was invited to represent Switzerland in the Swiss Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale (together with Gianni Motti, Marco Poloni and Ingrid Wildi) showing his multimedia-based installation «The Regulating Line». Right now, he is artist in residence in Beijing.

Denise Frey

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