Lacon, A.P., Fabregras, E., Cuckle, T., Kjærgaard Præst, M., 2014.

Eva Fabregras & Andrew Lacon

In their research and practices Eva Fàbregas and Andrew Lacon focus on particular patterns of circulation and production of meaning. Occupying very different positions, both artists share the approach of observing systems of mobility within western modernity, which they reproduce, disjoint and reconfigure. While Fàbregas' work imagines modernity's endless circulation of commodities existing outside of mankind's control, Lacon's work refuses to submit to the historic system of art object and its reproduction by interchanging the status of original and copy. For their exhibition at Kunstraum both artists have developed new work, which utilises or alters the given structures of the exhibition space.
In Settlement (2014) Eva Fàbregas uses patterns from found Scandinavian caravan brochures, reproduced to create the wallpapers that now decorate the walls of Kunstraum. In the brochures the caravans are presented not just as useful commodities, but as the modern life fantasy of a return
to a primitive past. These mobile luxury entities are represented as a community of autonomous manufactured objects, which appear to have the ability to gather and organise themselves in relationship to one another.
Eva Fàbregas' Untitled (2014) is a colony of swarming sculptures made from brightly coloured foam packing materials designed for protecting fragile items in transit. The foam pieces are an essential part of the global movement of commodities, but reaching their destination they are normally discarded. By attaching motors and sensors to the foam packing materials Fàbregas has, as is imagined in the images of caravans, enabled them to move around the space as a community of their own, existing within the circulation of objects but no longer in need of people to instigate their mobility.
The context for Andrew Lacon's works in Kunstraum is his research into colour within the history
of sculpture and photography - loss of colouration on the surface of the Parthanon's friezes or
the black and white reproductions of the brightly coloured Great Exhibition of 1851. Borrowing a technique of colouration used in classical sculpture courts to give warmth to bleached white marbles, the primary colours of 3 coloured lights at certain times of day fall on Reproduction of Sculpture - a photocopied reproduction of a Bernini sculpture, thereby reinserting the colour on the marble that was lost over time.
Andrew Lacon's Reproduction of Sculpture brings into question the idea of an original and a copy. Disregarding the fetishisation of the photographic print, it will be re-photocopied for each new exhibition, thereby reducing the quality of the image. Just as the ever changing light conditions in the gallery make it impossible to capture the full duration of 3 coloured lights, Reproduction of Sculpture is featured here as a part of an infinitely degenerating image.