Thursday 14th Oct - Sunday 17th Oct 2010
OLIVER LARIC - VERSIONS AT FRIEZE ART FAIR
OLIVER LARIC
Installation view of Versions, 2010
For further works and information on this artist please click here
The constellation of works presented at Frieze by Oliver Laric is the latest manifestation of Versions - the artist's ongoing project aimed at exploring historical and contemporary notions of image hierarchies.
A series of cast sculpture takes its cue from Reformation period iconoclastic vandalism. For Laric, iconoclasm is fundamentally 'productive'. In our networked Internet age, in which bootlegs, copies, samples and remixes now hold equal footing with the original in terms of cultural production, Laric suggests that iconoclasm is not the termination of an image, but rather the multiplication of that image into another possibility. In this sense, the original image becomes a 'version' of itself created by the iconoclast's vandalism.
A video montage composed of recycled footage functions as a veiled key for the sculptural works, and for the Versions project as a whole. Narrated by a cold, synthetic female voice, the video journeys from ancient sculpture to the Internet meme (via Walt Disney) in order to plot an idiosyncratic timeline of image appropriations, clashes and multiplications.
In an accompanying publishing project, Margarete Bieber's seminal 1977 book Ancient Copies - a text dealing with the protraction of Greek aesthetics into Roman art - has itself been 'copied' to produce an un-editioned artists bootleg of the original. A free PDF of this artwork can be downloaded below or a hard copy acquired from Lulu here.
Oliver Laric
Born 1981, Lives and works in Berlin.
Oliver Laric has exhibited at New Museum, New York; Kunsthaus Graz; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; 53rd Venice Biennale; Manifesta 7; ICA, London; FACT Liverpool; Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst; and Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe. His forthcoming projects include a presentation of Versions at Skulpturhalle Basel (2011).