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May 9, 2012
Out of Focus: Photography is the Saatchi Gallery's big contemporary photography show in London. It is Saatchi’s first major photography exhibition in a decade, and a self-styled cross-section of the world of photography now. The show has been interpreted as a mirror of the fractured world of contemporary practice.
The exhibition does not pretend to be a survey, or overview of contemporary photography. Rather, it demonstrates both Saatchi’s eclectic taste and the huge variety of uses to which the medium is being put now the rulebook has been thrown out and anything goes.
John Stezaker, Marriage L, 2007, Collage
One body of work that does stand are the collages of John Stezaker who splices together the publicity shots that film stars once sent to adoring fans; two faces unite to form a monstrous hybrid whose Jekyll and Hyde plausibility is extremely beguiling even when different genders are involved.
Equally intriguing is the site-specific sculptural installations of Paris-born, London-based artist Noémie Goudal:
Noémie Goudal, Les Amants (Cascade) 2009, C-type, lightjet print
Goudal explores the interface between nature and culture in images that are beautiful but melancholic. The water cascading down a woodland stream turns out to be polythene draped from strings and crumpled to replicate a babbling brook. The wild is contaminated.
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