Pablo Pijnappel
14 Jun - 26 Jul 2008
Pablo Pijnappel
Homer
14.06. – 26.07.2008
Opening: 13.06. 6 p.m. - 9 p.m.
We are delighted to have an opportunity to present Pablo Pijnappel alongside Paul Graham’s work, with Pijnappel representing a young, experimental artistic position that addresses the narrative structures of photographic images.
“Homer”, Pijnappel’s new installation, is a loose narrative based on the true story of Kevin Co, an American artist from a Filipino background. The slide show weaves together photographs and spoken text to create a narrative about the coming of age of the young man, who turned his back on New York at the age of 21 and went off to live quietly in the small city of Homer in Alaska.
By making it impossible to distinguish between fiction and documentation, Pijnappel picks up on his recurring autobiographical topic: the search for a father figure and emancipation from this figure through a journey into the geographical and cultural otherness of Alaska. The authentic biography of Kevin Co is adapted by the fictional character Spencer, whose story is intermeshed with Pijnappel’s in “Homer”. Pijnappel deploys self taken pictorial material of undefined origin that is however slotted together into a narrative as if in a collage. Their origin remains undefined, as in Pijnappels earlier works, not evoking the question of authenticity. “If you can reuse images that perfectly serve your objective, then why shoot them again? I don’t want to put more things on top of the pile. I just dig into this pool of already existing data“, to cite Pijnappel’s description of his slide collages.
Although the topic of adolescence and the analogous materiality of the three synchronous slide projections imbue the work with a certain romanticism, nostalgia is disrupted by the narrator’s monotonous voice and the slide projection that deconstructs the narrative flow. The monologue is spoken by the real figure, Kevin Co, who describes rather than narrating fragments from Spencer’s life on the fringes of civilisation in Homer. “Homer” is reminiscent of Sean Penn’s adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild”, yet the form it assumes is that of the inverted negative of a Hollywood plot.
“Homer” is Pablo Pijnappel’s third solo show at carlier | gebauer. Pablo Pijnappel was born in 1979 in Paris and studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam und at the Rijksakademie. His works have been shown in numerous international exhibitions, inter alia at Kadist Art Foundation in Paris (2008), Künstlerhaus Bremen, Whitechapel Laboratory in London, the Slovakian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Artists Space in New York (all in 2007) und at Witte de With in Rotterdam (2006).
Homer
14.06. – 26.07.2008
Opening: 13.06. 6 p.m. - 9 p.m.
We are delighted to have an opportunity to present Pablo Pijnappel alongside Paul Graham’s work, with Pijnappel representing a young, experimental artistic position that addresses the narrative structures of photographic images.
“Homer”, Pijnappel’s new installation, is a loose narrative based on the true story of Kevin Co, an American artist from a Filipino background. The slide show weaves together photographs and spoken text to create a narrative about the coming of age of the young man, who turned his back on New York at the age of 21 and went off to live quietly in the small city of Homer in Alaska.
By making it impossible to distinguish between fiction and documentation, Pijnappel picks up on his recurring autobiographical topic: the search for a father figure and emancipation from this figure through a journey into the geographical and cultural otherness of Alaska. The authentic biography of Kevin Co is adapted by the fictional character Spencer, whose story is intermeshed with Pijnappel’s in “Homer”. Pijnappel deploys self taken pictorial material of undefined origin that is however slotted together into a narrative as if in a collage. Their origin remains undefined, as in Pijnappels earlier works, not evoking the question of authenticity. “If you can reuse images that perfectly serve your objective, then why shoot them again? I don’t want to put more things on top of the pile. I just dig into this pool of already existing data“, to cite Pijnappel’s description of his slide collages.
Although the topic of adolescence and the analogous materiality of the three synchronous slide projections imbue the work with a certain romanticism, nostalgia is disrupted by the narrator’s monotonous voice and the slide projection that deconstructs the narrative flow. The monologue is spoken by the real figure, Kevin Co, who describes rather than narrating fragments from Spencer’s life on the fringes of civilisation in Homer. “Homer” is reminiscent of Sean Penn’s adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild”, yet the form it assumes is that of the inverted negative of a Hollywood plot.
“Homer” is Pablo Pijnappel’s third solo show at carlier | gebauer. Pablo Pijnappel was born in 1979 in Paris and studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam und at the Rijksakademie. His works have been shown in numerous international exhibitions, inter alia at Kadist Art Foundation in Paris (2008), Künstlerhaus Bremen, Whitechapel Laboratory in London, the Slovakian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Artists Space in New York (all in 2007) und at Witte de With in Rotterdam (2006).