Masks (Merkel F6.1)
2016 - Painting (Painting)
104.14 x 58.42 x 1.91 cm.
Simon Fujiwara
Masks is a series of abstract paintings by Simon Fujiwara that together form a giant, fragmented portrait of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s face. Masks (Merkel F6.1) was created in consultation with Merkel’s personal make-up artist; it features the special makeup that Merkel wears for HD cameras applied onto canvas. The image has been magnified to a near-microscopic level, rendering an ambiguous skin tone across which the makeup’s denser patches produce an abstract composition. Masks is an exhaustive and fragmented documentary project that intimately depicts one of the world’s most powerful women with an entirely new set of images that disappear the closer you approach. In this way, it takes the conventions of ethnographic imagery to a posthuman dimension by amplifying a constituent part of the complete subject of “Angela Merkel” to the point of unrecognizability.
The intersection of identity, memory, and history is taken up in Simon Fujiwara’s complex multimedia practice. The British-Japanese artist takes real world structures, thoughts, and events as his subject, constructing idiosyncratic narratives that emerge from these miasmatic creations. This work chronicles current conditions even as they demand attention in their capricious, oftentimes uncomfortable forms. While his practice borders on anthropological in its examinations, the products that derive from his work often turns their speculation towards the work’s viewership, who become affectively compelled to examine their own subjectivity in interacting with Fujiwara’s oeuvre.
Colors:
Related works featuring themes of: » Collective History, » Contemporary Conceptualism, » Found Objects, » Mixed-Media, » British
© » KADIST
Mateo Lopez
2012With Roca Carbón (Charcoal Rock, 2012) and Roca Grafito ( Graphite Rock , 2012), López plays with our relationship to inert and unremarkable objects such as rocks...
© » KADIST
Heman Chong
2009With a habit of reading eight to ten books at the same time, Chong paints his two-foot tall novel covers through referencing an extensive reading list (accessible on Facebook) he has kept since 2006...
© » KADIST
Kori Newkirk
2013LAB (2013) conjures the body as the trace of a sooty hand appears, spectrally, on a crumpled paper towel...
© » KADIST
Carlos Amorales
2005Produced on the occasion of an exhibition at ARTIUM of Alava, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art, this deck of cards is a selection of images from Carlos Amorales’s Liquid Archive...
© » KADIST
Carlos Amorales
2014Carlos Amorales, based in Mexico City, works in many media and combinations thereof, including video, drawing, painting, photography, installation, animation, and performance...
© » KADIST
Jonathan Monk
2003Untitled (rolled up) , is an abstract portrait of Owen Monk, the artist’s father and features an aluminum ring of 56.6 cm in diameter measuring 1.77 cm in circumference, the size of his father...
© » KADIST
Kwan Sheung Chi
2007A Flags-Raising-Lowering Ceremony at my home’s cloths drying rack (2007) was realized in the year of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China...
© » KADIST
Edgar Arceneaux
2006Untitled (Wheelchair Drawing) is a ten-foot photo transfer of the image of a wheelchair with burning embers in its seat...
© » KADIST
Wong Wai Yin
2021Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
© » KADIST
Abraham Cruzvillegas
2004Wright Imperial Hotel (2004) is a sort of bow and arrow made out of feathers, a São Paulo phone book, and other materials...
© » KADIST
Mario Garcia Torres
Mario Garcia Torres discovered the work of artist Oscar Neuestern in an article published in ARTnews in 1969...
© » KADIST
Simon Starling
2007Invited in 2007 to the Museum Folkwang in Essen (Germany), Simon Starling questioned its history: known for its collections and particularly for its early engagement in favor of modern art (including the acquisition and exhibition of works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse), then destroyed during the Second World War, the museum was pillaged for its masterpieces of ‘degenerate art’ by the nazis...
© » KADIST
Mario Garcia Torres
2010In Up All Night, Waiting for the Chelsea Hotel Magic to Spark My Creativity Mario García Torres constructs and documents a hypothetical scene, situating himself within a lineage of artists and creatives that used to congregate at the historic hotel...
© » KADIST
Kwan Sheung Chi
2012Kwan Sheung Chi’s work One Million is a video work depicting the counting of bills...
© » KADIST
Hamra Abbas
2010At first glance, Cityscapes (2010) seems to be a collection of panoramic photographs of the city of Istanbul—the kind that are found on postcards in souvenir shops...
© » KADIST
Wong Wai Yin
2021Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...