The Mediated Subject!

Oliver Lutz
The Mediated Subject (exhibition view)
Courtesy Scaramouche NYC

OLIVER LUTZ

Friday I had one of my Gallery days. I started out with having lunch with adorable Alice Lutz at Cafe Gitane (my favorite Nolita Cafe), before I wandered over to the Lower East side to see her husbands show at the Saramouche Gallery. One of 8 (?) small, but interesting Galleries on Orchard Street. Alice went home to pack and take a flight to London for the opening of the "Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera" a Tate Modern show, that one of Oliver Lutz's larger pieces will be part of.

At first I did not quite understand this show, but Lorin Prince (the director) and David from the Gallery are enthusiastic and wonderful storytellers. It was like a "Russian doll" revelation, the more they said the more I felt connected to the art.

Monochrome paintings dominate the gallery space. Infra-red surveillance cameras trained on each are connected to a bank of video monitors. They reveal a figurative under-layer of appropriated images beneath the canvas´s inky blackness, transgressing a modernist space of non-signifying reflection.....

.... The Mediated Subject investigates the disorienting affects of representation. Lutz´s gallery surveilance system places the viewer in direct relation to the canvas´s figurative scenes...

(words by the Gallery)

Oliver Lutz
Leg (installation view), 2010
Acrylic on canvas, CCTV system
60 x 75
Courtesy Scaramouche NYC

Oliver Lutz
Research Facility 1, 2010
Acrylic on paper
22 x 28
Courtesy Scaramouche NYC

It is fascinating for me to see a canvas that at first sight shows you a lurid black emptiness to then reveal deep thought through stories underneath. You know the artist has developed a new impressive technique and you know that it has depended on strict discipline and determination.

Oliver Lutz
Mittagessen,(installation view), 2010
Acrylic on canvas, CCTV system
60 x 88
Courtesy Scaramouche NYC

Now I am excited to hear how the opening at the Tate will go. The idea behind the show is "the unseen photographer" what could be a more perfect event for Oliver Lutz? There are no small names that will be associated to this show either; Man Ray, Nan Goldin, Walker Evans, Helmot Newton...