captionthis

“captionthis” is a long-term project on the shifting relationship between Image and Word today. The title hints at the vernacular online jargon and forum tag “captionthis”, where weird and witty images are deemed untaggable or “beyond words”. The layered works use the problematic aesthetic of advertising and the appealing allure of glossy images on pictorial and installation materials, testing their limits of critique, provocation and seduction.

Through techniques of manipulation borrowed from the urban and online accelerated mediascape – as the proliferation of backlit devices, the repetition of graphic logos and recurring subject matters – the installations question the cultural and political assumed value of the images that stick to our psyche and shared worldview.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1, John). “Words without thoughts never to heaven go” (Hamlet, Shakespeare).

In the time of ubiquitous photography and disappearing writing, mimetic and memetic representations, “captionthis” is a portrait of the conflicting hybridization of iconotexts today.