The power of fashion media imagery and the darker side of human nature

...seen on 27 April 2013 by searching for more information about British artist Mat Collishaw whose work (photographs, paintings, sculptures, installations) will be exhibited under the title 'Afterimage' from 2 May until 11 August 2013 at the Arter art space in Istanbul, Turkey. At the first view, Mat Collishaw's work seems to be not easily accessible. He mixes media, themes and connects them with current events, zeitgeist, lifestyle. By following art critic Waldemar Januszczak into the exhibition 'This is not an Exit' at the Blain/Southern gallery in London, Mat Collishaw's approach to 'chronicle' our way of life by mirroring it critically through art becomes obvious; watch Waldemar's guidance (video above) to the painting which connects cocaine dealers and the glamorous lifestyle promoted in glossy (fashion, etc) magazines for the explanation of the global financial crisis.

"Inspired by the potential for emotional manipulation inherent in the image, Collishaw's work employs beautiful, inviting and seductive images in order to tackle concepts such as despair, disease and evil," introduces Arter into Mat Collishaw's oeuvre on e-flux. Exclusively for the Arter art space in Istanbul, Mat Collishaw created the video installation which centers around photojournalist Kevin Carter's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken in 1993 of a little girl starving from hunger and a vulture which waits that she is dying. The story (such as it is told online) of the photo 'Famine in Sudan' carries several tragedy strands: the starving child sitting/lying not far away from a UN food camp, the vulture which is waiting for the child's death, photographers around who didn't help, and the suicide of Kevin Carter who (according to a citation from Time magazine on Wikipedia or the discussion on NPR) couldn't carry the memories of pictures and feelings of what he had experienced.

Fashionoffice is looking forward to view Mat Collishaw's interpretation of Kevin Carter's photo for the exhibition 'Afterimage' at Arter. The opening is on 2 May 2013.


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