Lafayette Anticipation associate curator Anna Colin talks to artist Tyler Coburn about Ergonomic Futures, a speculative project engaged with art, design, science, anthropology and writing. In this interview, Coburn discusses the research, production process and network of collaborators of a multilayered project ultimately concerned with the futures of humankind. Anna Colin: When one comes across your museum seats Ergonomic Futures (2016—) in contemporary art exhibitions—and soon in natural history, fine art, and anthropology museums—they look… [read more »]
.gifs from 1999 by Nicolas Fernández
In 1999 Nicolas Fernández began to include the new digital media in his output; the web sites You_Left (1999) and Father_Nature (2000) offer viewers a walk of endless possibilities through mazelike sound spaces that are scattered with texts. Father_Nature brings together, amongst a range of images, photos from different internet porn sites and paramilitary hunting clubs. They show nude female bodies posed in natural settings. The artist’s gesture alters the very texture of the images; the appearance of humans and nature is broken up, split apart. It is the mutations of these representations, more than their pornographic nature, that catch the eye, auguring a twilight world.
In 2004 Fernández resolutely embraced painting, which had been latent in his work for years. Often referring to myths, these figurative pictures typically feature a juxtaposition of heavily worked zones with other areas that remain only sketched out, conferring a different existential status on the represented elements. Inspired by a photo in a magazine, Jocaste (2008) questions the relationship between humans; whereas the joined hands weld the three figures together, the look in their eyes thrusts each down into its own sphere. These beings, seemingly withdrawn into their own world, point to another that lies beyond representation.
–Maryline Billod
