MARS

@stefanarno, Sylvain Couzinet Jacques

"We will die soon" smeared in black paint on a white construction fence surrounding an undefined piece of land on which, despite this general and individual realization, something is being created that is to be protected - from prying eyes, but also from intruders, as the taut barbed wire reveals. 

In his photographs, @stefanarno documents a (Western) society that is in a state of disintegration and yet is constantly working on its future. Everywhere people are building, consuming, consuming and, yes, loving as if there were no tomorrow. 

The photographs indicate that something is changing that could soon no longer be there. In this way, they expose nothing less than the absurdity of human existence. @stefanarno shows the aberrations of a capitalism that is out of control, whose construction projects have come to a standstill, whose urge for individuality has produced uniforms and conformity above all else. Steering wheels studded with rhinestones only know the way to the abyss. 

 On this shaky game board, @stefanarno shows man as a lovable lost man; a restless being, plagued by longings and never at his destination. The vagabond in a self-made hall of mirrors without an exit. The spatial situation of the young people that the French photographer and video artist Sylvain Couzinet-Jacques observed for a summer on a traffic circle in Madrid is just as indeterminate. 

In the most beautiful evening light, young bodies move carefree in graceful slow motion in the video work SUB ROSA. They whisper and smoke weed, swipe and cuddle, love and argue. The never-ending traffic that surrounds them hardly impresses them and yet cuts them off from the life that may still be waiting for them. The eyes are young, but the gaze knows more. What is coming towards them over there, on the other side of the road, is just the beginning of the end.

"We will die soon" is both a tragic and comical realization, which science would probably classify as a true statement - but who needs science now? 

The exhibition project is the first curatorial collaboration between MARS Frankfurt and Felix von Boehm and is funded by the Kulturamt Frankfurt am Main.

Exhibition
@stefanarno, Sylvain Couzinet Jacques
We will die soon
Sep 08 - Sep 27
Vernissage on Saturday, 07.09 at 18:00
Finissage on Friday, 27.09 at 18:00

Contact
Anna Nero
Robert Schittko
Marcel Walldorf
Ginnheimer Landstr. 35
60487 Frankfurt am Main

marsfrankfurt@gmx.de
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