Exhibition // Sean Snyder at Galerie Neu

Article by Candice Nembhard // Monday, Feb. 13, 2017

Sean Snyder’s ‘Aurora Borealis’ offers insight into the ways in which images and structures materialise themselves. With an array of disciplines and artistic movements at hand, our appreciation and understanding of complex images or techniques is often diluted by the influence of art history and art theory. As a result, our experiences of the image are heavily contextualised in its structure. Snyder’s observations of the structural similarities between different practices—for example, the act of weaving and electronics—opens viewers to the space of installations in which the structure and surrounding theory is abandoned and we are left with only the image itself.

Berlin Art Link Discover Sean Snyder at Galerie Neu

Sean Snyder, ‘Mnemonic Equation (Level 5)’, 2017, 25 black/white archival pigment prints on matte paper, 30 x 48.5 cm, mounted on 3mm aluminium, installed on wall painted RAL 7047 // Courtesy the artist and Galerie Neu, Berlin

In the age of electronic networks, replicas overtake traditional practices; the mobile phone represents communication and the computer signifies writing and design. Snyder considers these technological advances as a part of the ‘art of deception’ in which we, as observers, have become accustomed to a series of ‘trompe l‘oeil effects’. If contemporary imagery overwhelms viewers with coded and interconnected information, then the relationship between an image and the surrounding structure becomes all the more prevalent.

Sean Snyder, ‘Silence (Audition)’, 2016-2017, 16:9 format HD video, 4 minutes 33 secondes, color, audio, flatscreen monitor // Courtesy the artist and Galerie Neu, Berlin

Sean Snyder, ‘Tableau Bateau’, 2016, Random loop on hacked Sony XPERIA Z Ultra; PVC structure RAL 9003 (Signal white, Blanc de sécurité, Signalweiß) // Courtesy the artist and Galerie Neu, Berlin

‘Aurora Borealis’ in that sense delivers abstract images whose only sensory connection is through colour, tone and space. Each image exists not in our senses but in an underground world of communication and transportation untouched by outside structures and influences.