Manhattan Picture Worlds
Monumental advertising signs have penetrated public space to such an extent that their content no longer really seems important. The number of advertisements is excessive, their appearance too volatile and the attention they attract simply too fleeting for any true reflection to be generated. Rather, a new aesthetic is being created, which moulds the external space: the perception of public space is being manipulated by the illustrative compositions of the consumer industry.
In his work "Manhattan Picture Worlds", Thomas Wrede depicts a model backdrop of these scenes in a striking manner. He shows real spaces as an assembly of different universes featuring heterogeneous images. There is no longer a concrete point of view, the orientation is erased, the depth of space is cancelled through different perspective views. The image is reflected in its environment, contrasting with the opposite surface. There remains nothing but shapes and reproductions, fiction and projection. Wrede documents how the real space becomes the image itself.
In Manhattan, the photography medium crushes the observer with advertising signs, the images of which revoke the depth of space of the metropolis and convey it as a represented, even imaginary, space. In Clervaux, given the changed context, the installation presents the same visual medium with new room for manoeuvre for its expression. In the open air once again, the images influence perception of a public space, much like the advertising posters initially did in New York, but in a new and different way.
Text: Annick Meyer
Exhibition views
© CDI 2012