Marine Hugonnier and the role of the image

Art For Modern Architecture LA Times MJ - Death of Michael Jackson
2010

Seeing Marine Hugonnier's works, exhibited by Max Wigram Gallery, I was initially attracted to the vibrancy of the colors and collage-like rendering of her pieces. Reading further, I found Hugonnier's ideas about "the image" and how she responds to images in media interesting.


The colors that first attracted me to the pieces are actually used as a coverup, in reality obstructing the true image,which to me seems like paradox - the coverup makes me want to look more, not less. I wondered if this is her purpose or a bypass of her work...


The press release from Max Wigram Gallery eloquently states interpretations of her works and describes her process:


Marine Hugonnier’s work is about the nature of images and the history, culture and politics that are associated with them.  As Christian Rattemeyer writes in her recently published JRP Ringier monograph: "Marine Hugonnier has persistently investigated the role of the image, its abilities and its limitations. For Hugonnier, what is referred to as the image is not just the visual representation of an object, a landscape, or a person, but the vortex of a network of power relations, historic conventions, political ambitions, and aesthetic force. More importantly, for Hugonnier the image always carries the promise of an excess of meaning, a resistance to its subjection to a purpose of commerce, propaganda, and ideology—in short the spectacle. Her work is to rescue the image; sometimes from itself, sometimes for itself, but most often from the multiple forces that enact upon it a battle for dominance."

The works on paper presented in this exhibition continue to deal with the obstruction of the image, holding back information in order to question it.  The Art for Modern Architecture series consists of the front pages of The New York Times that report on the fall of Communism in 1991.  The newspaper images have been concealed by silk-screen cut outs, so that we have to draw on our own memories of the events to fill in the gaps.

In these works, the monochromatic paper is cut, rounded and inflated to create intensely pigmented but subtle sculptural objects. These shapes are a response to the artist’s intimate thoughts and emotions and relate to the feelings that recent news events have provoked in her. Formally, however, there is a clear nod to modernism and Hugonnier conceives this body of work as a negative homage to the loss of modernism’s utopian aspirations and progressive thoughts. In this sense, they are ‘revisions’ of those values and a challenge to re-think them in postmodern times. As is usual with Hugonnier’s work, the immediacy and formal power make the initial, intense impact.  It is only when we look closer that we discover layers of meaning that lend a deeper poignancy to these apparently simple pieces.

Modele 7 (Revision) L

2010

Art For Modern Architecture GBW Guardian Fall of the Berlin Wall
2010

Modele 28 (Revision) (Large)

2010

Installation view at Max Wigram Gallery

All photographs courtesy of  Max Wigram Gallery