Exhibition Image Lab 2010: Design – Face – Identity

Image Lab: A collaboration of eikones, NCCR Iconic Criticism, and the Academy of Art and Design FHNW, Visual Communication Institute.

A fascination with the human face does not emerge at first through its portrayal in images. In day-to-day communication “we read faces” and draw more or less explicit inferences about the character of other people, their origin or social status. The likeness fascinates because as an artifact of the interface between the visible and the invisible it attempts to hold features of a person still. In the creation of portrait images a myriad of questions takes pose. What role does authorship play in the creation of a portrait? What can be expressed in a portrait beyond the anatomical constellation of an individual? How does liveliness enter into a likeness, and by contrast how does an impression frozen lifelessness set in? At what point in a portrayal can one speak of features of caricature? What turns a portrait into caricature? What aesthetic effort must a group portrait contain, in order that the collective appears in companionship? Image Lab 2009 pursued these questions in a practical manner. Students of the “Master of Arts in Visual Communication and Iconic Research” drafted portraits which make the difficulties and concepts of portrayal visible. The results of this “applied iconic research” are on display on the eikones NCCR Iconic Criticism premises.

Video Documentation (englisch)