THE CRITIQUE OF STATICAL REASON

Canadian artist Adad Hannah combines two forms of expression – photography and video – mixing them into a new “framework” of living pictures/ tableaux vivants. Appropriating notorious works in art history, with multiple levels of interpretation, Hannah tries to distract us from a traditional way of viewing them. Either by recreating/visually reinterpreting some famous paintings or sculptures (Géricault, Rodin) or by distorting others (Bosch, Velásquez), he makes a shift in the paradigm: the passage of time is observed/recorded through static images. It is about our experience as viewers rather than an ecstatic rapture in front of the masterpiece.

Adad Hannah (New York, 1971), lives and works between Montreal and Vancouver. He has exhibited at the Samsung LEEUM Museum (Seoul 2011), Prague Biennial 5 (2011), Museo de Bellas Artes (Santiago, Chile 2011), Canadian Biennial-National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa 2011), MNAC (Bucharest 2011), Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney 2010), Liverpool Biennial (2010), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2010), the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (2008, 2009), Zendai MoMA, Shanghai (2009), Galerie Thomas Shulte (Berlin, 2008), Ke Center for Contemporary Art (Shanghai 2008), the Vancouver Art Gallery (2007), Ikon Gallery (Birmingham, 2006), the 4th Seoul International Media Art Biennale (2006), Casa Encendida (Madrid 2006).

Media partners: Digi24 TV, ArtClue, modernism.ro, Radio France Internationale Romania, Metropotam, Artindex, Clubul Presei Transatlantice.

Special thanks: Dan Borteanu, Cătălin Burcea, Andu Dumitrescu, Nicolae Dumitru, Roxana Gibescu, Ilina Schileru, Dilmana Yordanova, Respiro Dental.