LandE scape
Christopher Reid
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
Chapel of Rest has an intrinsic symbolic feature for its reminders to the elusive notion of death: German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that " nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead ". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how di you conceive the balance between the functional aspects of the symbols and the visual unity for the narrative of this series?
Art has to touch you in one way or another; it speaks to all of us in different ways. I want my work to grab the viewer and make them confront the work. By having a very objective viewpoint of the Chapels of Rests, the viewers are thrown straight into that room without any visual distractions. The narrative and psychological elements of the work can start to speak for themselves. I don’ t edit my photographs and I am not interested in trying to add narrative elements in that way. My images do not lie; they aren’ t a fabrication, they are real life. This is what these rooms are like.
When conceiving Minutes you visited many crematoriums to find out for yourself about what happens behind the scenes: this has allowed you to capture the essence of the process in all its concreteness. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?
34