The Ceremony and The Spirit by Roe Ethridge and Zin Taylor
16.11.12–26.01.13
Roe Ethridge is known for his photographic work, which exists both in the fashion and the contemporary art scene. Although he works mostly on commissions, the dynamics of the demand have never kept Ethridge from infusing each shoot personal and rich language. His images avoid being subordinate to the commission and they become, instead, the terrain for a peculiar role-play between the commissioner, the client and the subject. His work is often described as a new take on landscape and still-life photography, and Ethridge, playfully exploring these traditional genres, adopts an approach that seems to complicate both the status and the source of the image. His medium is photography, but he develops his images in such a way that they seem like a display for the sculptural, be it the object, space or the body.
Zin Taylor could be introduced as a narrator of forms, one who uses a diverse range of mediums, including sculptural installations, drawing, animation, writing or story telling. His practice investigates subjects through their shape, gesture and materiality – in sum, through their sculptural behaviour. In his work, the physical status of a thing often becomes a space, one that not only hosts narrative prospects, but also directs and reconsiders the psychological life of the thing in question. Treating every element – or thing – as a potential interlocutor, Zin Taylor opens up a conversation between and with items to which/whom no word is usually given. It is certainly surprising to see what a thing actually has to say when it is allowed to express something beyond its functionality, beyond its construction and material aspect. Although these two artists move in very different areas, there is a commonly shared core to their work: both Ethridge and Taylor elaborate a pool of information within their oeuvre.
The project Roe Ethridge and Zin Taylor developed for La Loge puts their languages into play, of course, but they also add another element to the discussion, namely: the Temple of La Loge. The result is a triangular relationship in which the artists and the building become at once one another’s client and commissioner.
Curated by Anne-Claire Schmitz
