Simulacrum II
From the 8th of September until the 25th of November 2018, Noorderlicht | House of Photography and the Fries Museum present the photography exhibition Simulacrum II. On show is the work of five artists - Beate Gütschow, Grégory Chatonsky, Thibault Brunet, Lionel Bayol-Thémines and Leigh Merrill – who all deconstruct reality and reassemble it. The distinction between real and unreal is barely discernible in their work.
Real and virtual realities are moving towards each other at a rapid pace. In advertising, images of reality and its digital models merge seamlessly into one another. In the film industry, CGI (computer generated imagery) makes it possible to immerse ourselves in other worlds. On social media, we are becoming increasingly aware of the same phenomenon, the necessity of ‘fact checking’ both image andword has become a fully-fledged concept.
A simulation that takes the place of the reality it stems from is called a simulacrum. The long-term same-named exhibition series examines different aspects of the dividing line between real and unreal. In Simulacrum II we see the work of five artists, each of whom deconstructs reality and reassembles it in a different way. Lionel Bayol-Thémines creates patterns with multiple repetitive elements, thereby evoking the image of a snowy mountain landscape. Thibault Brunet transforms the real world into a model using a three-dimensional scanner, making completely new perspectives in still and moving images possible. Gregory Chatonsky feeds thousands of real satellite images into a ‘neutral network’ which then independently creates similar images, like a hallucination of another planet. Beate Gütschow compiles a 3D model based on a multitude of images from reality, after which she lets a computer look at it from a medieval perspective, without a vanishing point. Leigh Merill examines an environment by taking thousands of photographs of it beforemerging them into images of an imaginary urban landscape.