ERIK KESSELS 24 HOUR IN PHOTOS, INSTILLATION

We’re exposed to an overload of images nowadays. This glut is in large part of the result of image-sharing sites like Flickr, networking sites like Facebook and Instagram and picture-based search engines. Their contact mingles the public and private, with the very personal being openly displayed. By printing 350.000 images, uploaded in a twenty-four hours period, the feeling of drowning in representations of other peoples’ experiences is visualized. - Erik Kessels

I have always been drawn to the work of Kessels, both visually and conceptually. I find myself reading an awful lot about his practice, and I often find his work visualises a lot of my thought processes when it comes to questioning the medium of photography and our relationship to it. I appreciate his way of undertaking such instillations and think they do state what he intends, however on a personal level I feel as though what he is suggesting could be achieved in a significantly subtler way. His work is often rather 'In your face' and there thus there is no hiding anything. Its almost as if he is using 'quantity over quality' in the most literal sense. It isn't executed to provide much questioning, and doesn't leave much space for the imagination. In reflection, after looking at the works of Clare Strand, (as explored and discussed in the following post) I feel as though their concepts go hand in hand, yet her approach of visualising this is much more subtle and thus in my opinion more effective.