Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Concordia University
September 8 to October 24, 2015

Sean Snyder explores the anti-artistic domain of research-based art: he shuns the creation of “works” in any productivist sense and opts instead for case studies that challenge the conditions of the image. “Despite the ever-increasing amount of images we are exposed to,” he writes, “it could be conjectural that we see less. We see less of the image itself, overpowered by the meaning imposed by the discursive context in which it appears.” Our gaze is clouded because images are not windows open to the world but the distorting constructs of propaganda.

Noam Chomsky has said, “Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to the totalitarian state.” Propaganda and violence are “engines of history” that adapt to the regime in power. Faced with these engines, we can react in different ways, either accepting that manipulation is inherent in the image and going on to stress the ideological validity of the cause that justifies it, or unmasking the manipulation as a move toward deactivating it.

At a time when so many images circulate and fascinate, precisely because they are so toxic and nasty, Snyder carries out what could be thought of, in the clinical sense, as a purge. In his exhibition, Sean Snyder demonstrates this through the fundamental recognition of the raw materials of visual information (ink on paper, celluloid, magnetic tape, algorithms and pixels) and his handling of the rhetorics of persuasion.

Captive as we are in our purgatory, power instrumentalizes the image just as much as the image constitutes a manifestation of power. Snyder may not be able to drive the demons out, but by restoring the abilities to see and think, he shows us how to recognize them.

BIO

Sean Snyder was born in 1972 in Virginia Beach; he lives and works in Berlin. Since 1998, his works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions worldwide, including Mediacity Seoul in South Korea (2014), the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne (2013), the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (2012), the Israeli Center for Digital Art in Tel Aviv (2010), the Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm (2009), Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris (2009), Galerie Neu in Berlin (2014, 2009), the Lisson Gallery in London (2009), and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest (2007). He has received many grants and awards, including from the Israeli Center for Digital Art in Tel Aviv (2007), the Office for Contemporary Art, Oslo (2006), the Center for Contemporary Art, Kiev (2006), the Institute for Contemporary Art, Sofia (2004). He is represented by Lisson Gallery in London, Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris, and Galerie Neu in Berlin.

www.lissongallery.com
www.crousel.com
www.galerieneu.net