52 Orchard Street , New York , 10002

Press Release Scaramouche is pleased to inaugurate its new Orchard Street space with a solo exhibition by New York-based artist Oliver Lutz, his first in New York. "The Mediated Subject" is an installation of monochrome canvases, drawings, and a video work. … (read more)

Press Release

Scaramouche is pleased to inaugurate its new Orchard Street space with a solo exhibition by New York-based artist Oliver Lutz, his first in New York. "The Mediated Subject" is an installation of monochrome canvases, drawings, and a video work.

Monochrome paintings dominate the gallery space. Infra-red surveillance cameras trained on each are connected to a bank of video monitors. They reveal a figurative under-layer of appropriated images beneath the canvas’s inky blackness, transgressing a modernist space of non-signifying reflection. Accompanying the monochromes are works on paper ranging from early twentieth century photos of landscapes and folk culture to research facility decor. Set in a drab focus group room, the recently realized video The Behavioral Subject (A Mental Model) features Lutz manipulating various masks, personalities, and tools to form contemporary allegorical narratives.

Incorporating a diverse array of source images, modernist conventions, and political concerns, The Mediated Subject investigates the disorienting affects of representation. Lutz’s gallery surveillance system places the viewer in direct relation to the canvas’s figurative scenes. Together, the work in the exhibition suggests the consequence of a reality progressively anaesthetized by its own self-image: cause is divorced from effect, the ramifications of subjective decisions rendered un-traceable.

Courtesy of Scaramouche

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