From meticulously constructed photographs that occupy the space between documentary and fiction to sculptures made with dust and bone. From confessional texts that occasionally break into song to moving images that silently blur the lines between reality and fantasy. Works by all the artists chosen to be part of ‘Everything is Real: After Life…’ explore various facets of death, desire and the illusion of life.
Neil Hamon (born 1975, Jersey, UK) holds an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College in London where he lives and works. Hamon uses photography and sculpture to investigate the human relationship to loss. He employs techniques of representation that act as facsimiles of reality. Hamon adopts the role of both photographer and subject in ‘Suicide Self-Portraits’, a work based on crime scene photography in 1920’s America. In re-enactment everything depends on the detail but inevitably, the reality is trivialised by the fact that the facsimile is only an intricately prepared copy, devoid of the truth and the substance of the original. Hamon employs the illusion of reality to reveal a deeper truth, one that is more closely linked to the tragedy of the human condition.
Peter Buggenhout (born 1963, Ghent, Belgium) started his career as a painter and drawer. In 1989 his paintings exploded into 3D. Since then Buggenhout has been creates sculptures and huge installations with dust titled ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’, using waste material (iron slag/ polystyrene/ polyester), plastic packaging, rubbish and residue, with “abject”, trash and rejected material like blood and intestines. These materials lose their form and meaning once they are removed from their original context. Devoid of any symbols they bring the viewer back to the object itself.
Nadia Lichtig was born in 1973 in Munich, Germany to Czech and Serb parents. She is interested in how sound and images relate to the past, our environment and our collective and individual memories. Her works derive from situations found in everyday life; these are modified and turned into short fictions. She explores the domain of performance through projects that question the universality of language as in ‘Ghosttrap’ - a collection of short stories based on interviews with non-native English-speaking subjects describing their experienced fears.
Ruben Bellinkx (born 1975 in Wilrijk, Belgium) is an adventurer and storyteller. His film and video installations and photo works depict a fantastic world of perverse games gently directed by the artist; games where dogs attack and savagely decimate chairs and little tortoises struggle to move large tables. Through these complex and beautifully filmed images, Bellinkx establishes an ambiguous relationship between man-made objects and animals.
Shine Shivan (born 1982, Pandalam, India), creates works which are semi-autobiographical excavations of the nature of masculinity. His works act against perpetuated stereotypes, thereby liberating fixed notions of identity from their constraints. ‘Second Hand Pepe II’ - an assemblage of found and used elements, speaks of the way socialized human beings invent versions of the self – their identities, thoughts and sexuality. He suggests the instability of gender, implying that it can always be subverted or queered by practices such as drag and cross-dressing.