PROJECT#1: WESTERN MONUMENTS – COLIN SNAPP
BOTANICAL GARDEN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SIENA
43°18’33.2″N 11°18’09.0″E

RAIDEN PROJECT #1 WESTERN MONUMENTS BY COLIN SNAPP Raiden Project presents Western Monuments, the first Italian solo exhibition dedicated to artist Colin Snapp (1982, Lopez Island, USA). Following the first edition of RAIDEN residency, the exhibition will take place at the Tepidarium of the Botanic Garden in Siena from August 23rd to September 24th 2021.

Colin Snapp’s photographs, videos, and sculptural works investigate the mediated visual experience through which we perceive and record the world around us. Embracing a Baudrillardian attitude towards globalisation, tourism, and simulacra, Snapp’s works invite visitors to take a step back and recognize valuable remembrances. Focusing on the present North American landscape through caricaturing touristic perspectives, the artist reminds us that the way we look at and represent reality is never objective. Screens, frames, and lenses are filters that do not coincide with the essence of things but rather they open up to uncanny prospects. Snapp’s artistic process takes its cue from daily-life images to then disclose subtler meanings. The act of photographing or filming becomes a conscious ritual of translating reality, a way of defining an unprecedented conceptual landscape. Far from any morbidity, his voyeurism takes on analytical and scientific features.

In the frame of this exhibition, the artist leads visitors through an installation of eight large photographs and the video Western Monuments, which was internationally premiered on the occasion of the 58th October Salon, Belgrade Biennale 2021.

Over the forty-five days immersed in the natural environment of the XIX century estate la Poderina in Tuscany, the artist has been able to complete his ND studies, initiated in Berlin in 2017. The 2021 series features images conflating photos of various architecture and signs with reminiscences from past societies of Europe and Africa. The photos were shot throughout the western United States. After taking the photograph, the artist would print the image, place a glass neutral density camera filter on top of the print, and re-photograph the image creating a dual layer in which the photograph and the photographic device become singular. The procedure becomes the outcome while the tools of creation become part of what has been created. Through this assembler process, artist questions our contemporary screen culture. No matter whether we look through glasses, social networks, or advertising billboards, we are constantly exposed to filtered and distorted reality.

The 12-min film Western Monuments – from which the exhibition takes the title – spurred from an intense experience the artist had in North Africa a few years ago. He was particularly struck by the kitch-like similarities that the shopping malls of Southern California have to the historic sites in Jordan and Egypt. His parafictional attempt was to frame the malls in a way in which it would be almost impossible to tell the difference between the two landscapes. Once the photo series was completed, Snapp came back to those juxtapositions to produce the film. Moving back to Washington in 2020, he started filming at the local mall where he grew up to show it in a way that could possibly glorify its history in the same way people might do with an important monument. COVID-19 allowed the artist to access the malls in a different way, as the shops were deserted yet still open to the public. The soundtrack accompanying it has been composed with artist Mauro Hertig, meshing up sound recordings from the mall with a reversed Taylor Swift’s hit. This created an almost ghostly prophetic scenario that ended becoming a core point. Thus, the filmic work is a farewell homage to the past while remaining locked in the present.

The exhibition is kindly hosted by the University of Siena with the aim to establish cultural bonds between this historical institution and the artist’s in situ installations.

Text by CURA.