Exhibitions, Germany, Berlin, 02 October 2009
Yashima Mishto e Ozne, photographic exhibition at
WIR Gallery - Boxhagener Straße 33 - Berlin, 2nd – 16th October 2009. www.wirgallery.com // info@wirgallery.com.
Photography, as pure reflection of reality, generates an ‘indexical’ relationship with its object.
What happens then if someone intervenes on its surface, damaging it? The representation of
the wound could make an impact on the observer’s perception in a deeper and even more
perturbing way than reality itself.
Alexander Rodchenko’s album Ten years in Uzbekistan (1934), offers the perfect example with
his defaced portrait of disfavoured comrades.
This was an extreme but unavoidable action for the artist: during the Great Purge even
possessing pictures of Stalin’s political opponent was itself considered ‘anti-Soviet’ and
‘counterrevolutionary’. The result of the brutal defacement of their images dropping black ink on
faces and names ended in a double eradication process: at first physical, then symbolic.
As a strong and unconscious paradox, these images of defaced bodies rebirth into a new
disturbing existence.
Yashima Mishto, a talented photographer whose work investigates on the subtle border
between erotic and pornography, puts his hottest shots in the hands of Ozne, an esteemed
colleague, who’s artistic language manifests itself through scratches and cancellations on
images. The effect of this cooperation is far from bare censorship: Ozne’s intervention on
pictures offers a different point of view, preserving the original erotic content of Yashima’s
photography.
Faces and members, wounded, scratched out or covered with black ink, catch the observer’s
eye, giving an unexpected power to the pornographic content of the image itself.
Fellatio is not censored as an act but the model’s face is rubbed out: in this way the artist
restores the model’s privacy but the price is the perturbing defacement of the image.
Many times Ozne is playful and ironic with the subject, ‘dressing’ Yashima’s models with
scratched hot pants or painting whimsical leaves and flames on details.
WIR Gallery - Boxhagener Straße 33 - Berlin, 2nd – 16th October 2009. www.wirgallery.com // info@wirgallery.com.
Photography, as pure reflection of reality, generates an ‘indexical’ relationship with its object.
What happens then if someone intervenes on its surface, damaging it? The representation of
the wound could make an impact on the observer’s perception in a deeper and even more
perturbing way than reality itself.
Alexander Rodchenko’s album Ten years in Uzbekistan (1934), offers the perfect example with
his defaced portrait of disfavoured comrades.
This was an extreme but unavoidable action for the artist: during the Great Purge even
possessing pictures of Stalin’s political opponent was itself considered ‘anti-Soviet’ and
‘counterrevolutionary’. The result of the brutal defacement of their images dropping black ink on
faces and names ended in a double eradication process: at first physical, then symbolic.
As a strong and unconscious paradox, these images of defaced bodies rebirth into a new
disturbing existence.
Yashima Mishto, a talented photographer whose work investigates on the subtle border
between erotic and pornography, puts his hottest shots in the hands of Ozne, an esteemed
colleague, who’s artistic language manifests itself through scratches and cancellations on
images. The effect of this cooperation is far from bare censorship: Ozne’s intervention on
pictures offers a different point of view, preserving the original erotic content of Yashima’s
photography.
Faces and members, wounded, scratched out or covered with black ink, catch the observer’s
eye, giving an unexpected power to the pornographic content of the image itself.
Fellatio is not censored as an act but the model’s face is rubbed out: in this way the artist
restores the model’s privacy but the price is the perturbing defacement of the image.
Many times Ozne is playful and ironic with the subject, ‘dressing’ Yashima’s models with
scratched hot pants or painting whimsical leaves and flames on details.
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