Chaos by Rancinan
13 - 31
May 2014
It is our great pleasure to host for the second time in Hong Kong award winning French photographer Gérard Rancinan showcasing his latest series titled “Chaos”.
Rancinan’s post-developed practice of staged photography references history, popular culture and Western art, as a critical and sometimes satirical commentary on social and political issues. By juxtaposing classical archetypes with popimagery, he blurs the fine line between high and low art.
Featuring 20 visually seductive and epically proactive original photographs, the works tell a dramatized narrative of humanity’s battle between social order and chaos, inevitably falling into the fate of civil and moral degeneration. The visual display of the exhibition moves between populated scenes of barbaric disorder to desolated scenes of its aftermath. Influenced by major world movements of globalization, religion, politics and the growing domination of the Internet, Rancinan gives a critical take through the eye of his lens.
Highlights from the exhibition include:
Press Power - describing the force possessed by modern media as a lethal weapon that can destroy person’s life with the power of the printed word. In reference to the renowned phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words”, the work transmits the notion of the overwhelming role media plays in modern life.
My Life on the Web - the centre installation in the gallery, is situated inside an enclosed panel and can be viewed only through a peephole. As an interactive experience, audiences’ curiosity inevitably overcomes and they look through the hole to find an illuminated scene of eroticism. The minute long peeping implicates the viewer by inviting his passive participation into events of moral corruption.
The Feast of the Barbarians - a monumental spectacle of social misfits and taboos with ironic reference to Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Depicting chaotic scenes of subversion and anarchy, the work also trigger fears of loss of control.
Showcasing Rancinan’s mises en scène photography is the overtly violent Riots, a contemporary portrait of the American Revolution ridden with violence and gang wars, where the ashened city of New York is overruled by corruption.
This exhibition will also host selected artworks from the photographer’s recent series ‘’A Small Man in a Big World’’, on which the artist offers us his vision of Mankind. The Man of today is overwhelmed by the world of media, virtual intelligence and moral censorship he has created. Rancinan plays with our relationship to society in very uncluttered and engaged photographs.
Internationally renowned, Gérard Rancinan’s work is exhibited in prestigious museums throughout the world including Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Danubiana Museum in Slovakia and Triennale of Milan in Italy. This year for the first time he will showcase a major solo exhibition in the Himalayas Art Museum in Shanghai, China.
Chaos by Rancinan at Opera Gallery Hong Kong: from May 13 to May 31, 2014
