Oliver Zwink

Oliver Zwink first wanted to ask himself whether his work is provocative or not, and so began his lecture by relating to other artist's practices that he identifies with. Although I found it interesting to see how other artists get influenced, like I do, it seemed to take over his lecture; he spent too much time talking about other people's work and I found myself confused as to why he'd put that much emphasis on them.

He then discussed his own work in the second half of the lecture. I did find myself intrigued by his work, in particular, his city scape pieces.

He began by discussing the thought behind the work; he walked through Paris and took photographs of architecture that he became interested in, namely the "uncanny" or anything he could find that appeared in a state of decay or destruction. Anything that gave him a sense of abandonment and absence. In the application of this idea to his practice, he built small "cities" made of tower blocks and buildings of paper boxes and sprayed them with inks and watercolours. They looked to me like a deformed, depressing city. All the "buildings" looked decayed and were lopsided. The viewer was given a walk way through the city to make their way to the next room, enabling them to experience the decay but also to disturb the sense of absence that Zwink was trying to create. Zwink did state that although he made this work post 9/11, it was not a comment on terrorism or the attacks that occurred. Although after he'd said it, it made sense, when I first saw the work I didn't automatically think of the destruction of 9/11 in New York. It actually reminded me of the fictional city of Gotham from the Batman series, where the city projects the decay of the villains to connote the absence of any goodness.

What I did appreciate with Zwink's practice was that he was constantly trying to drag the viewer into a moment that he has captured. He sees something that strikes a chord with him, takes a photograph and therefore introduces the viewer to a reaction with the work.

He ended the lecture by showing his film "Cuban". I've tried finding a copy of the film or just a clip on YouTube and Google, but was unable to find anything.