Taiyo Onorato / Nico Krebs, Wires, 2008
Fotomuseum Winterthur Grüzenstrasse 44+45 CH-8400 Zürich Suisse
Seems familiar? We are constantly bombarded by images and information – at school, at work, in newspapers and on the web. All of these stimuli carry a multitude of underlying codes. Day in and day out, we navigate our way, more or less successfully, through a torrent of texts and images, subtle advertising messages and hard facts, official instructions and personal messages. New and long-established media alike vie for our undivided attention. What we tend to overlook is the fact that we are increasingly subject to a second, media-dominated reality in which we are no longer directly involved.
The exhibition featuring works by Becky Beasley (GB), Thomas Galler (CH), Aneta Grzeszykowska (PL), Thomas Julier (CH), Anja Manfredi (A), Ryan McGinley (USA), Taiyo Onorato / Nico Krebs (CH/CH), Clunie Reid (GB) and Oliver Sieber (D) explores this densely woven tapestry of direct and indirect experience, of immediate and mediated seeing. It quietly flags up the relationships and juxtapositions that permeate our casual, everyday navigation of parallel worlds. The young generation of artists presented here draw their inspiration from found images and their own creative originality, mapping out new territory in contemporary art photography. In this context, the term Karaoke symbolises a certain pleasure in citing and trying out familiar patterns and styles. The karaoke machine invented in 1971 by Daisuke Inoue presents melodies and lyrics hesitantly at first and then with increasing confidence. In this popular, non-hierarchical form of entertainment, the serious and the light-hearted are never far apart. Singing along develops into individual interpretation and imitation develops into innovation.
