Zurich-based photographer friends Niklaus Spoerri and Francisco Paco Carrascosa are showing two very different long-term photographic projects at message salon.
Niklaus Spoerri “Who is Who”
“Reality is cancelled in the gap between image and perception.” – C. Morpeth
Doubles are people who look like someone else, like a celebrity, a star. Niklaus Spoerri has been visiting professional doubles since 2007 and portraying them in the private atmosphere of their own homes. His documentary portraits operate at the interface between the private and public spheres. “Who is Who?” is an exploration of the doppelganger motif and questions categories such as authenticity and identity as well as how they are conveyed in the media.
The exhibition at message salon is being organised to mark the publication of the photo book “Who is Who?” by Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg. As a kind of encyclopaedia, a “Who is Who” lists and portrays the most renowned heads of an industry. Niklaus Spoerri’s photo book imitates this structure and parodies it at the same time – with real doppelgangers. The title of the book thus arouses visual expectations, which unfold their ambiguity at the latest when looking at the pictures.
Niklaus Spoerri “Who is Who?” – The photo-documentary reference work of the international lookalike scene, is presented to the public for the first time at the message salon. Various authors, including Jean-Martin Büttner (Tages-Anzeiger), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia Foundation), Jens Gross (dramaturge Maxim Gorki Theatre Berlin) and Markus Reich (Glückspost/Ringier) have written texts for “Who is Who”. A special edition with an original print (C-print) will be published for the book launch.
Francisco Paco Carrascosa “Johnnie Walker on the Beach”
With a picture taken in Japan, Francisco Paco Carrascosa began a project in 2008 that accompanied him for several years as he travelled to Japan, Spain, Italy and Switzerland. He captures his observations in pictures analogue to his movements. With “Johnnie Walker on the Beach”, Francisco Paco Carrascosa presents a photographic film installation as a possible social catalogue and an encyclopaedia of everyday life today. Francisco Paco Carrascosa’s photographs are a homage to the film “Blow-up” and an appreciation of the carefree, the intimate and the overlooked moments. The artist describes these photographs as still lifes, images of people and diaries of the 21st century: everyday scenes that tell us a lot about our society in their details. It is the small things, the simple stories that the flâneur captures in his pictures as a roaming “Johnnie Walker on the Beach”: for example, a packet of cigarettes that has been run over several times and remains crushed and wet on the street, or people arguing with each other, driving to work or sitting quietly on a park bench. Francisco Paco Carrascosa enquires about consciousness in everyday life, about the storage locations of these images. And he self-critically scrutinises his own work as a photographer who produces new images every day.