© Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer, Mathematisches Modell Nr.5, 2010
© Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer, Artefakte und Modelle, 2009-12
“Lena Amuat and Zoë Meyer have won the Swiss Federal Design Award for their project ‘Artefakte und Modelle’. As the title suggests, in this project the two photographers look at scientific models through the lens of art. These are models conceived as a way of arriving at new insights by varying the method of visualisation or by reshaping or using a different type of measurement. The artists are interested in the images of reality conveyed by the models and in the extent to which aesthetic processes are involved in the creation of knowledge.
The capture of reality through mimicry, reproduction, conservation and measurement, and the opposition between reality and fiction: these are the themes that interest Lena Amuat and Zoë Meyer in this project. The process of investigation and the play of perceptions are also at its centre. Viewers of these mostly large-format photographs find themselves confronted with a puzzle. What do the pictures represent? Do they show real objects, or abstract forms? Were they created by computer, or painted with a brush? Is the background really there, or was it added in afterwards?
The two photographers use various media to modify the pictures, trying to rethink the scientific angles from an artistic point of view. They see their work as a subjective pictorial archive that is constantly being expanded. It is always given a site-specific spatial arrangement and presentation concept.
An older work by Lena Amuat and Zoë Meyer is concerned with objects confiscated by Swiss customs. They use their precise pictorial vocabulary to reproduce illegal souvenirs in the form of stuffed animal heads, occult masks and fur coats. These photographs are also part of the two artists’ image archive and are presented alongside the artworks from ‘Artefakte und Modelle’ (in a presentation that varies depending on the exhibition location). The result: multifaceted installations whose quiet motifs absorb and touch the viewer.” source: Swiss Federal Design Awards
Their work can be seen here
N I H I L S E N T I M E N T A L G I A, 