Emmanuel Van der Auwera
Memento 11, 2018
Newspaper .3mm aluminum offset plates mounted on aluminum frame
143 x 99 x 2.5 cm
56 1/4 x 39 x 1 in
56 1/4 x 39 x 1 in
Copyright the artist & Harlan Levey Projects
This work is from the part of the Memento series that followed bombings across Europe between 2015 - 2017. The “Memento Series” builds on the artist’s fascination for the mediatized...
This work is from the part of the Memento series that followed bombings across Europe between 2015 - 2017.
The “Memento Series” builds on the artist’s fascination for the mediatized representation of the crowd. Many of these works focus on the aesthetics of collective catastrophe as portrayed in mass media. Shortly after the catastrophe the masses shroud themselves in mourning – demure postures, pained expressions, eyes locked on the ground or directed upwards, fixing to some imaginary point. Suffering culminates into a position of elevation. How do catastrophic events like these write themselves into collective memory? And in what lies the common imagination for the future? The Memento series combines existing commercial offset printing techniques (used for brochures, magazines and newspapers), collaborations with local newspapers and insightful analysis of contemporary mediatization processes. With a deceitfully simple intervention Van der Auwera reveals a sharp analysis of the automatized system of newsgathering, its processing and the inscription of all this in the cultural memento. In this work, the blue-out, like the blackout in cinematography, isn’t only a means to speak about the unspeakable. It is also a technique to appeal to the imagination. Hence, Van der Auwera opens the way to a reading that puts the tragic and the sublime on the same plane. His images don’t leave us uncertain, but on the contrary, they gnaw away at us with the lingering reminder of a simple yet often unstated abominable truth: The fact that we do not see something does not mean it is not there.
The “Memento Series” builds on the artist’s fascination for the mediatized representation of the crowd. Many of these works focus on the aesthetics of collective catastrophe as portrayed in mass media. Shortly after the catastrophe the masses shroud themselves in mourning – demure postures, pained expressions, eyes locked on the ground or directed upwards, fixing to some imaginary point. Suffering culminates into a position of elevation. How do catastrophic events like these write themselves into collective memory? And in what lies the common imagination for the future? The Memento series combines existing commercial offset printing techniques (used for brochures, magazines and newspapers), collaborations with local newspapers and insightful analysis of contemporary mediatization processes. With a deceitfully simple intervention Van der Auwera reveals a sharp analysis of the automatized system of newsgathering, its processing and the inscription of all this in the cultural memento. In this work, the blue-out, like the blackout in cinematography, isn’t only a means to speak about the unspeakable. It is also a technique to appeal to the imagination. Hence, Van der Auwera opens the way to a reading that puts the tragic and the sublime on the same plane. His images don’t leave us uncertain, but on the contrary, they gnaw away at us with the lingering reminder of a simple yet often unstated abominable truth: The fact that we do not see something does not mean it is not there.