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Amuat Meyer

Awarded

Lena Amuat / Zoë Meyer

'Artefakte und Modelle' (2009 - 2012)

Photography

Jury report

Games with Perception
Lena Amuat and Zoë Meyer have won the Swiss Fed­eral De­sign Award for their pro­ject 'Arte­fakte und Mod­elle'. As the title sug­gests, in this pro­ject the two pho­tog­ra­phers look at sci­en­tific mod­els through the lens of art. These are mod­els con­ceived as a way of ar­riv­ing at new in­sights by vary­ing the method of vi­su­al­i­sa­tion or by re­shap­ing or using a dif­fer­ent type of mea­sure­ment. The artists are in­ter­ested in the im­ages of re­al­ity con­veyed by the mod­els and in the ex­tent to which aes­thetic processes are in­volved in the cre­ation of knowl­edge.
The cap­ture of re­al­ity through mim­icry, re­pro­duc­tion, con­ser­va­tion and mea­sure­ment, and the op­po­si­tion be­tween re­al­ity and fic­tion: these are the themes that in­ter­est Lena Amuat and Zoë Meyer in this pro­ject. The process of in­ves­ti­ga­tion and the play of per­cep­tions are also at its cen­tre. View­ers of these mostly large-for­mat pho­tographs find them­selves con­fronted with a puz­zle. What do the pic­tures rep­re­sent? Do they show real ob­jects, or ab­stract forms? Were they cre­ated by com­puter, or painted with a brush? Is the back­ground re­ally there, or was it added in af­ter­wards?
The two pho­tog­ra­phers use var­i­ous media to mod­ify the pic­tures, try­ing to re­think the sci­en­tific an­gles from an artis­tic point of view. They see their work as a sub­jec­tive pic­to­r­ial archive that is con­stantly being ex­panded. It is al­ways given a site-spe­cific spa­tial arrange­ment and pre­sen­ta­tion con­cept.
An older work by Lena Amuat and Zoë Meyer is con­cerned with ob­jects con­fis­cated by Swiss cus­toms. They use their pre­cise pic­to­r­ial vo­cab­u­lary to re­pro­duce il­le­gal sou­venirs in the form of stuffed an­i­mal heads, oc­cult masks and fur coats. These pho­tographs are also part of the two artists' image archive and are pre­sented along­side the art­works from 'Arte­fakte und Mod­elle' (in a pre­sen­ta­tion that varies de­pend­ing on the ex­hi­bi­tion lo­ca­tion). The re­sult: mul­ti­fac­eted in­stal­la­tions whose quiet mo­tifs ab­sorb and touch the viewer.

Biography

Lena Amuat
Born in
1977
Education
Photographer

Zoë Meyer
Born in
1975
Education
Photographer

Web

www.lenazoe.blogspot.com

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