Abel Techer — Portfolio — Slash Paris

Techer develops a pluri-disciplinary practice — painting, design, sculpture, photography, video, installation — questioning notions of identity: gender, relationships to the self, masculine/feminine stereotypes, and transvestism. Through intimate strokes, his work articulates a constant exploration of the self(s), and of the relation to objects and spaces. His works translate a quest that aspires to surpass his own body. The body becomes an object of experimentation, of possibilities that enable fantasies, the imaginary; at the same time a dreamlike space and a playground.
Through his different works, the artist creates a “personal mythology” in which the notion of play is central. Revolving around appearances, playing, and performances of the self, “false pretences” converge. He introduces different avatars that multiply infinitely and invite us to enter the skin of a another character who is both other and intimately oneself.

For Techer, “Self-portrait is this strange way of becoming another. Painting, photography have this power to tear the subject from his or her image, to fix it, to render it untimely. The subject is in constant evolution, the body transforms.” His work finds its rooting in the works of the American Queer theorist, Judith Butler, to highlight the malleable properties of gender.

———