Nightshift
This impressive installation is made up of a set of 135 illustrated newsprint pages that Batia Suter has compiled, printed, and laid out on the floor interspersed with woolen blankets. The title of the work, Nightshift, is a tribute to her grandfather who was a night worker. The artist invites us to follow her on a tour of discovery of heterogeneous images printed in shades of grey. In the manner of an exquisite corpse, these seemingly disordered assemblages allow her to empty the image of its initial substance and to propose a new intuitive reading. By abandoning its original use, the decontextualized image acquires a different meaning through its new associations. Faced with this opaque alchemy, the viewer’s attention is disrupted and heightened in order to decipher the possibility of a meaning. Through its formal and thematic analogies, Suter’s visual archipelago questions the contemporary value of the image and its illustrative power.
Work produced with the support of the Contemporary Art Center of Ivry – Le Crédac.
Text written by Quentin Rose as part of the partnership between the École du Louvre and Lafayette Anticipations – Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin.
Exhibition
Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry – le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine (France)
from 18 janvier 2019 to 31 mars 2019
Batia Suter
Born in 1967 in Bülach, Suisse
L’œuvre de Batia Suter procède d’une écriture par l’image fondée sur l’élaboration d’installations monumentales. À la recherche de reproductions imprimées, l’artiste explore de multiples supports iconographiques afin d’en récupérer le contenu. Preuves d’une pratique archivistique semblable à l’Atlas Mnémosyne d’Aby Warburg, ces innombrables images amassées sont ensuite montées et assemblées jusqu’à satisfaction. Par cette décontextualisation progressive, l’imprimé devient un ready-made qui entraîne de nouvelles significations et réactions, l’association inédite d’images éclectiques conférant à ces dernières des possibilités expressives inexploitées.
Née en 1967 à Bülach (Suisse), Batia Suter a étudié aux académies d’art de Zurich et d’Arnhem de 1990 à 1995. Elle vit et travaille à Amsterdam.
