silver halide print on Fujifilm Crystal Archive DP II photo paper, framed behind acrylic glass
60x80cm
Through the inaccurately upscaled version of a screenshot taken by the artist during an unexpected display error that occurred while scrolling through her iPhone gallery, “IMG_9227” questions the typically overlooked fragility of digital images and the short-lived impact of art in the current age of social media, where artworks have become nothing more than content to be publicly shared, viewed and liked, however quickly being forgotten about again due to the Internet’s fast-paced nature. The work is intentionally presented as a framed image behind highly reflective acrylic glass, making it difficult to capture photographically and thus deliberately breaking out of the current standards within the emerging art scene usually requiring to create aesthetically pleasing, trend-adaptive and “instagrammable” pieces in order to gain recognition within the cyberspace. In relation to this concept, the original image shows an installation view of the work “30cm” by Argentinian artist Pablo Accinelli taken on the artist’s phone during an exhibition visit only to later be posted onto her Instagram story, revealing the work’s greater purpose not only to act as a critical interrogation of and thought-provoking reminder for the viewer, but also as a type of personal revelation about her own unexamined behaviours as a digital native.
The work’s title, being identical to the name the portrayed screenshot was automatically saved as on the artist’s phone, additionally references the growing immateriality of photos in the post-digital age, which now only exist as data sets consisting of intangible arrangements of pixels and virtually archived in the style of file names and image codes. Counteractive to this reality of a constantly expanding digitalization, where the initial existence of photos as essentially physical objects is slowly being deleted from modern society’s culture, the presented image was produced traditionally through an analogue photo printing technique using silver halide, acting both as a symbol of artistic rebellion against the on-going rise of virtual photo-archiving and as an unfamiliar translation of the digital errors that are commonly encountered on our screens into the physical space.
(2025)