[JEANSELLEM VIEWER] — JACQUES CHARLIER OLD MEDIA I 25.04-07.05.1975 — Categories: press — Keywords: Galerie S:t Petri, Jean Sellem, archive — Category: press — Photographs exhibited at Galerie S:t PetriLUND: Jacques Charlier from Belgium is one of twenty participants in New Media 1 at Malmö Konsthall. During the opening, as well as at the dinner afterwards, he photographed extensively, and the result — 180 images — is now being shown together with a number of newspaper articles at Galerie S:t Petri in Lund.Old Media 1, as the exhibition in Lund is called, describes the situation in the art world and at the dinner during the opening — what people did, their attitudes and facial expressions.Jacques Charlier has been working with this type of documentation for quite some time. For several years he worked at a public-works department in Liège and there photographically documented particular events, such as the retirement of certain gentlemen, conferences, parties, etc. The photographic series have since been exhibited in various places throughout Europe.The exhibition is open weekdays from 15:00 to 20:00, Saturdays and Sundays from 12:00 to 17:00. — — — Category: press — New Media at Malmö Konsthall:A link between Western and Eastern thoughtThe participants cannot strictly be regarded as conceptualists in the same way as, for example, the members of Art & Language — the group was formed in England in 1968 — whose works lack every form of representation. New Media 1 is rather a kind of summary of early conceptual art, a further development of art as a search for identity.Many contemporary artists increasingly use texts, photographs, film, sound or image tapes (videotape), as well as “performance”, in which living people express the intense presence of the self by carrying out actions. Among the many media available, photography is the most common, simplest and most widespread. Contemporary artists use this medium to fix the “moment” and thereby convey visual information about subjective experience.FIND YOURSELFGünther Metken, who compiled New Media 1, emphasizes in his introduction:“During the 1970s an entire generation distanced itself from the creation of art/objects, or from devising how such creation should take place. For this generation, art means an action undertaken in order to find oneself in the midst of the surrounding world, which must be made accessible.One sees oneself situated within social and cultural conditions that must be explored. Instead of, as previously, reacting primarily to art, attention is directed towards one’s own origins, towards oneself and others. One observes motives and feelings that have perhaps never previously been encountered. One observes one’s surroundings, the houses and environments in which one lives. One reflects on changes and tries to understand each of them. Introspection and intimism are the rules, something that is also reflected in the small format of the photographs, which are placed in albums or published as brochures... It is not the individual photograph that counts, but the series, which reveals a context, encompasses a certain period of time and establishes a theme for its development.”Some of the participants in New Media 1 express in their photographs, publications and videotapes an ontologically coloured problem of identity (ontology: the doctrine of what constitutes the substance of all things). One example is Katharina Sieverding, who, with 196 highly contrasting photographs of her face assembled into a single monumental image, creates an intense presence of her own person; Christian Boltanski, who attempts to reconstruct his past using fictitious photographic material or to recreate a person’s identity by displaying her shoes, gloves, glasses, underwear, etc.; and Nancy Kitchel, whose dark photographs of landscapes give a premonition of an approaching inner darkness.COMMUNICATIONOthers work with l’art sociologique (sociological art), such as Jacques Charlier. His deliberately amateurish photographs often depict banal and trivial human activities removed from their original context and placed in an artistic one. Fred Forest, one of the pioneers of l’art sociologique, seeks, through a live electronic image, to describe without manipulation an everyday sociological reality: that of the street opposite. Likewise, the message is not neutral; it is a function of the viewer’s own gaze, but also of the place in which it acquires its inherent force. To emphasize the importance of communication with the public, Fred Forest invited everyone, through a daily newspaper, to express themselves in an empty box and to send their contributions to Malmö Konsthall, where they are now exhibited.Didier Bay — the ethnologist of the moment — also works with communication and participation, documenting, among other things, different apartment interiors bearing traces of human activity. Forms are provided on which visitors may write down their reflections on his historical and socio-cultural studies. Annette Messager, well aware of the position of women in contemporary society, questions the identities imposed upon women. Her intention is to criticize the dominant role of men in social life.Another form of experimental activity is practised by Paul-Armand Gette, who has a scientific education. Among other things, he conducts entomological and botanical observations at different times and in different places. Like Jean Le Gac, he is interested in the subjective experience of reality. Ger Dekkers combines viewpoints and trains the eye in a differentiated perception of a landscape. Bernhard and Hilla Becher work in a similar way when they inventory buildings. In order to preserve the building’s maximum characteristic quality, it is photographed from certain angles. The building is presented as a historical monument.Anthony McCall constructs a particular visual logic from Manet’s “Luncheon on the Grass”. He sets himself the rules governing the construction of the artwork and thus has certain choices: either — or. David Tremlett conveys the essence of an image by means of poetic and geometric signs. Joel Glassman believes that the artist’s function is to show others what they themselves do not see, to bring things as they are and always have been into consciousness, and to demonstrate the experiment of Life: “For life is art and art is life and everything is beautiful and belongs to everyone.”Characteristic of almost all these avant-garde exhibitors is the absence of a technological vision of the future. Their works instead reveal an unconscious proximity to the transience of life.JEAN SELLEM