An image that is grainy, indistinct, or dispersed over the surface of the screen invites a haptic look, or a look that uses the eye like an organ of touch. – Laura U. Marks in “Loving a Disappearing Image”
Link to the installation Anatomy of Desire at Theaterlab NYC (March 2015)
Link to video White Nights
Anatomy of Desire engages with the performance of sexuality, identity and desire, but also focuses on a notion central to photography and lens-based mediums in general: the gaze and other related questions such as seeing and being seen, revealing and concealing, voyeurism and the tension between private and public.
"I started this project in 2008 after a personal event triggered a long period of insomnia, during which I explored and took part in New York City’s gay nightlife, including illicit sex parties, as a way to face my own dark side and find catharsis. Sometimes accompanying my gay friends, sometimes wandering on my own, I photographed exclusively with my Blackberry’s camera — the first generation of cell-phone cameras, several years before the advent of Instagram and the proliferation of iPhone photography generally. The spectacular and almost theatrical aspect of the scenes I witnessed fascinated me, as did the tension between the observer and the observed/exposed, and the shifting nature of these roles. I was also intrigued by the way the extremely low resolution of the camera created texture and gave the bodies a sculptural quality while at the same time blurring the contour of the human figure and reinforcing its dissipation. Here, the dematerialized surface of the images seems to mirror the fleeting aspect of the close and brief encounters I photographed. Additionally, I'm attempting to explore the parallel between the mechanisms of desire and photography in the longing to retain a momentary experience that is already gone once captured by the camera." — Karine Laval
Anatomy of Desire is presented as a site-specific installation where Laval transforms the space into fragments incorporating images from the project. Some of the images are presented significantly enlarged to the limit of abstraction whereas others are printed in a much smaller and intimate scale, inviting closer inspection. The resulting effect is reminiscent of an augmented 3-D pixelated image where the viewer finds herself immersed into the fragmented landscape of the artist’s memory.
Exposed explores further the parallel between the mechanisms of desire and photography and the relationship between object and viewer, the seen and the unseen, voyeurism and exhibitionism, through a series of collages and images using the notion of photographic exposure as a metaphor.
Multimedia installation (pigment prints, pins, video, sound, bed, speakers, mini projector, fluorescent black lights)
Film documenting the installation
Still from "Anatomy of Desire" installation at Theaterlab NYC, March 2015
Still from "Anatomy of Desire" installation at Theaterlab NYC, March 2015
X-R #2
X-R #3
X-R #4
X-R #5
X-R #1
Exposed explores further the parallel between the mechanisms of desire and photography, and the relationship between object and viewer, the seen and the unseen, voyeurism and exhibitionism, through a series of collages and images using the notion of photographic exposure as a metaphor.