Bruno Metra & Laurence Jeanson — ID — Dukan Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 16, 2013 → January 4, 2014

The Dukan Gallery gives carte blanche to the collector Michel Ogier offering the first exhibition of photographic works by the artist duo Bruno Metra & Laurence Jeanson. Called ID, the series question the fragility of individual identity against the diktats imposed by the society of images.

These images overwhelm us and they can alter the otherness, the ability of human beings to recognize themselves in another. Or the other seems to no longer be available, reworked, transformed, iconized by media exposure models; the other is no longer a mirror. Je est un autre — I is an Other. Another that we can take ownership by the retouch, by the restraint of his body, of his face. A face that is de-faced.

Face pieces cut from a magazine, applied on someone else, a person who then becomes another, partially changes its identity and remains suspended in the middle, not really him, not really the other. Between reality and projection, between willingness to be or to seem. The duo works without any retouch, directly, scalpel scissors, scotch, a artistic surgery emergency performed, reinventing the patient’s identity. The intervention is deliberately apparent. The rough cutting and the adhesive paper symbolize the violence and the fragility. The nude individual makes artifice seem even more aggressive.

Fragile identity photos, snapshots of a teenager’s bedroom, the photographs of Bruno Metra & Laurence Jeanson challenge us and remind us of our own demons. The ID series echoes the problems of our society. Since the launch of the artists website it was spotted by artistic trends online magazines in many countries. Newspapers such as the Huffington Post (U.S. and FR), Daily (U.S. and UK) and Bild also published articles on their work.

The two French artists are working together for a year on these series dedicated to identity.