by Will Brand on November 7, 2012
Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop, now up at the Met, has obvious appeal. It’s the first major exhibition to examine manipulated photography, and manipulated photography—and learning to spot it—is fascinating to anyone with a pulse. To be honest, I didn’t think the exhibition could possibly come through on the promise of the topic. Curator Mia Fineman, though, has created an exhibition that manages to give a comprehensive history of manipulation, cast doubt over photography’s potential for authenticity, and provoke and reward close looking. You should go, and you should bring your mom, because she’ll get it too.
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by Will Brand on October 24, 2012
This spring, wandering around the mini sculpture park at Frieze New York, I noticed a tiny canvas propped against the back of one of the expensive steel cubes. I don’t remember what was painted on it—based on that, I’ll guess geometric abstraction—but the attached business card indicated it was the work of some not-yet-famous artist seeking a bit of free publicity. I liked the spirit of the thing, but I still had work to do, and I figured walking around an art fair with a canvas under one arm wouldn’t please security. Still, there’s some wisdom in bringing your art to collectors, rather than waiting for them to come to you.
That’s something of the thinking of La Fin du Monde, an online show curated by Julien Levesque and Caroline Delieutraz up now at LaFIAC.com. The exhibition venue is a cybersquat, established in 2010, intended to catch visitors looking for FIAC, the major Paris-based art fair this weekend. Instead of the fair, they’ll find a clever, fairly encyclopedic exhibition of recent net art, ranging from established continental artists like Mouchette and Systaime to relatively fresh faces like Emilie Gervais and Sarah Weis.
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