Solyanka VPA, 20 September — 6 December, 2015
Intimate Collaborations explores the intimate relationship between performance and photography, the action and the image. Intimate Collaborations invites the viewer to an intimate encounter with Manuel Vason’s artistic practice along with new work specifically commissioned for this exhibition.
In Vason’s Intimate Collaborations with other artists, a performance work is either restaged anew or uniquely developed, specifically for his camera. These projects differ in principle from conventional documentation of performance in that Vason is always the sole witness to the singular live event, which also takes place in a non-theatrical space of the artists« choosing. Each collaboration is predicated on a series of mutual concerns: a challenge to the relationship between performance and the photographic document; a fascination with the body; and the exploration of new forms of collaborative practice.
Manuel Vason’s artistic practice explores the relationship between photography and performance, presence and representation. He considers the capturing of a moment as an act of creation, a ritual towards the illusion of immortality, and an exchange between who is in front and who is behind the camera. The collaborative nature of his practice shapes a unique, hybrid art form and generates new vocabularies. His collaborations to date have produced some of the most iconic images of performance and his work has been published and presented internationally.
Vason was born in Padua, Italy in 1974. He discovered his interest in photography while working in a black and white professional darkroom. After having assisted some of the most celebrated fashion photographers of his generation in Milan, New York, Paris, London and Los Angeles, he decided to pursue a Masters degree in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins at University of the Arts in London. In 2002 he completed and presented two books: Exposures a publication on the body in Live Art (Black Dog Publishing, 2002) and Oh Lover Boy, a two-year collaboration with artist Franko B (Black Dog Publishing, 2002). In 2007 Vason’s first solo exhibition Encounters was presented and accompanied by a 230 pages catalogue (Arnolfini/Cornerhouse). In 2012 he presented Still_Movil an itinerant exhibition of Co-creations with 45 Choreographers in South America. In October 2014 he will be launching his latest book project titled Double Exposures. Vason is continuously developing a practice integrating different mediums and collaborative methods.
Curatorial group: Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich, Oksana Smirnova, Katya Krylova
smirnofffoundation.art 